In the Clouds

Our first day back in Christchurch from our Free Weekend and we headed for another restoration project near Birdlings Flat. This project is set on 650 hectares, which also includes 1500 sheep and interestingly enough, is owned by an American conservationist. This piece of property is his own personal project, where hopefully The hills will be restored to native forest from plantings that will grow iinto a seed source which will allow nature to reforest the rest of the surrounding areas.

The variety of different kinds of plants planted displays this, including Coprosma, New Zealand Flax, and Lancewood. This is all part of an experimental process, to which one of the tenants, Rima gave us more information about. Over the last four years, there have been over 4,000 plants planted. These plants have it tough, as the area is near the ocean with lots of wind and harsh temperature changes (some rainy times, some drought), making it a tough climate for plants to survive in. Not only do they have to battle the ocean winds, but they are harsh Southerly winds. These plants also are consumed by hares, and as Rima mentioned, one hare can decimate around 1,000 plants in just one weekend.

Everyone listening intently to Rima while she explains how to properly mulch a plant

Our job today was to help with the not-so-glamourous (far less so than planting) weeding and mulching process to ensure that these plants didn't get overgrown by exotic grasses, or eaten by hares. We focused on pulling out all the weeds under and around the plastic wire cages that enclose the plants. These grasses are dense and hard to eliminate without animals grazing, which causes even more difficult for the natural plants to be able to establish themselves. After pulling out the grasses surrounding the plant as well as around the protective fence of each plant, we were instructed to use dry grass to place surrounding the plant as mulch to ensure that the moisture would stay in and that no weeds would grow through it. We started off on one side of the mountain, working until lunch to pull out all the weeds and mulching a planting site that Dr. Hostetler's students planted in 2016.

Working hard to ensure the plants are free of any weeds

Dylan and his helper, Bonnie, mulching a plant

After having lunch in the clouds (literally), we began our trek down the other side of the mountain where we continued to pull weeds and mulch a one year old site of native plantings. The difference seen in the mulching from both sides was clear, proving to us that this process clearly benefits the plants when done properly.

Eating lunch in the clouds

Once finishing up with our weeding, we had a beautiful walk down that included all of us on the hunt for agate. We finished up our day with a trip to the aqua center, where we all enjoyed the warm relaxation pool, and of course the lazy river. - Tess

Proud of our weeding!