Plants collected and ready to take to their new home at the school!
Hilltop School had a great idea to revamp an outdoor classroom area at their school, so that it could be used by classes. The space was once used by many students at break times, so the large native trees had no understory, just hardpacked soil. However, a recent fence around the field excluded the area, giving it some protection from hundreds of feet. The students thought it was a great opportunity to turn it into a real forest area with paths and seating for classes that wanted to take their learning outside. They applied to Kids Greening Taupō for the Contact Energy Take Action Fund.
Planning out the site and marking paths and planting areas
As the area already has established native trees creating a canopy, it is the perfect spot to re-home native seedlings that have popped up in a plantation forest. If left there, these plants would be destroyed when the trees were harvested. Saving them and replanting them under a canopy like this one is a great way to create an instant, free, native understory.
We contacted Jackie from NZ Forest Managers and asked her for help. She took a group of Year7-8 Hilltop School students out ‘plant hunting’ in a plantation forest on Wairakei Drive. Our coordinator, Rachel, showed the students how to dig up native plants keeping their roots intact and keeping as much soil as possible around them. We were able to get hundreds of native seedlings, ferns, and ground covers to replant in the outdoor classroom area.
The students leading the project, spray painted paths and areas to plant, then everyone pitched in and planted a forest! They said that it was like creating a huge piece of natural art and colouring it in with plants! It looked amazing when they had finished. Hopefully, these plants like their new home and thrive in their new forest.
The leaders of the project decided that we needed more plants to fill in the understory, so they decided we should go plant hunting again. This time we organised a trip for all of the Hilltop School KGT Student Leaders. There were over 30 tamariki from Hilltop School on the KGT Student Leadership Team in 2025! We all headed out to the plantation forest on Wairakei Drive with NZ Forest Managers and some wonderful parent helpers. It turned out that we had parents who worked for DOC, Waikato Regional Council, and NZ Forest Managers! We had fun going on a native plant hunt and collecting all the native seedlings and ferns that we could find, rescuing them from the forest that will be harvested one day, and transplanting them into their forever home in the outdoor classroom space. We also learned about automatic traps after spotting one with two fresh rats underneath it. It was fantastic to watch two robins flitting around us as we looked at the trap, as if to say 'Thank you!'
In 2026, the Hilltop School student leaders really got this project to come together! A group of Year 6-7 KGT Student Leaders presented an application to the Creative Communities Scheme for funding for murals for their outdoor classroom. We were so proud of them. They wrote speeches, practiced them, then presented them to a room full of adults. That took a lot of courage! They were successful and they used the funding to hire Sue Graham - Artist at Wildwood Gallery to work with students at the school to plan and paint murals for the space. Two of the murals were used in the school’s production at the Great Lake Centre. Five murals were completed to provide a backdrop to the outdoor classroom space. They are full of colour and feature many native taonga species. The students did a wonderful job of designing and painting them under Sue’s guidance. Thanks to Town Centre Taupō for providing the paint and Mitre 10 MEGA Taupō for providing the wood and other supplies.
Tables were made and installed thanks to Hire a Hubby Taupo and funding from the Contact Energy Take Action Fund. NZ Forest Managers helped some of our student leaders to collect ponga logs to bring to mark the edges of the paths and planted areas in their outdoor classroom. Then another student leader's family took on the job of pegging them all down. A group of student leaders helped us to infill plant the space with 100 more native plants funded by First Credit Union. Then, some of them went and spoke to every class at the school about the project space and how to care for it. True leadership! Thanks so much to Nic from Waikato Enviroschools who helped us out with the mahi to bring everything together. What an awesome community collaboration!
