Brentwood Gully Project
St Patrick's school Kids Greening Taupo Rangers have taken on the Brentwood Gully and helped make it better for the community. They contacted Taupō District Council in 2020 about a messy area of trees blocking the storm water flow through one of the culverts. Investigation by TDC found that the trees had actually been vandalised and needed to be removed. The area was replanted by TDC, but they also offered to pay for a planting for the rangers. The rangers interviewed Brent from TDC about the best spot to do their planting. He recommended different places that would not block people’s views, that would help with gully maintenance, and that would help water flow. They decided to plant a weedy bank that could be seen through the window from Northwood Kindergarten. They then went to the kindergarten and invited the staff and tamariki to be involved in the project too. Next, they interviewed Robyn from Greening Taupō about the best native plants to order and they organised the planting event.
All the students from St Patricks Catholic School got to join in with the planting. One class at a time, they planted the 600 hundred trees. Northwood kindergarten tamariki came down and joined in too. They have loved watching their trees grow through the window in the playground.
In 2021 the school and kindergarten decided that they wanted to regularly use the gully for bush school/kindergarten excursions. They spent time weeding, cutting and pasting broom and pulling up tradescantia. They also potted up lots of little kowhai seedlings to plant into the gully the next year. Taupō District Council offered to fund another planting day, so another 600 trees were planted by the students. This was followed up by a further planting of 550 trees in 2022. This time Taupō Childrens Corner joined in with Northwood Kindergarten too.
The students wanted to be involved in predator control in the gully, so they asked Predator Free Taupō for support. They built trap boxes and set the trapline through the gully. They check these traps and can input data about catches on the Trap NZ app.
Several other weedy banks have been cleared and planted in native trees with Kids Greening Taupō support. The school children are enjoying supporting the kindergarten children and showing them how to look after the gully. It has been a lovely example of tuakana-teina learning.
Several awesome local volunteers have joined in, helping to maintain the plantings and the Greening Taupō Wicked Weeders have helped too.
Now, the gully is used regularly for nature learning. There has been fungi hunting, hill rolling, bug hunting, hut building, planting, weeding, trapping, litter pick ups, autumn leaf collecting, and lots of nature play happening!
We think this is a really neat example of a Kids Greening Taupō student led community project run with amazing support from lots of organisations, with funding from Taupō District Council. Thanks TDC!
