Reporoa’s Koru Garden

Koru Garden History

In 2017 Reporoa Primary won a competition and were awarded a $10,000 restoration planting grant through the Treemendous programme. With Project Crimson and the Mazda Foundation, the school created a plan to turn an empty paddock beside the school into an interactive outdoor learning area. The community came together and created an amazing koru shaped native garden with paths and a central stage. The Prime Minister at the time and Bugman, Ruud Kleinpaste came along to support the project along with news crews. You can read more about this in a NZ Herald article here.

KGT Involvement in the Koru Garden

We started working with Reporoa Primary in their koru garden in 2024. We had three sessions throughout the year working with classes in there, exploring their special area, teaching them about our unique native plants and helping them do some maintenance. We weeded, infill planted, mulched, and made a bug/lizard hotel with logs. They were excited to find different fungi on the logs, including a pretty cool purple one. It led to discussion about how important fungi are to break down our dead animals and plants. One area was weeded with grubbers and then planted by the tamariki. At the request of the school, we agreed to start coming in more regularly to support learning in the area and to help them keep on top of the maintenance of the space.

Planting Day 2025

In 2025 we planted with the kindergarten and checked on the koru garden while we were there. A good spot was identified for a planting. When we arrived with the plants a term later we were shocked at how much the grass had grown. We discovered a jungle! With the kindergarten tamariki arriving in half an hour to plant, we were under pressure to clear the site quickly. It was HARD work. A group of boys learnt to use grubbers and a class of younger students helped out, pulling grass and weeds by hand. We managed to clear a site twice as big as planned, and 50 more native plants were planted by the kindergarten tamariki and other school classes.

Mulching Day- Term 4 2025

Reporoa's rich wetland soil is not like Taupō's pumice soil! Less than 6 weeks after we planted the area, we found the grass had already grown over our plants! Luckily the plants had grown lots too. The tamariki from Reporoa Primary School found the native plants, weeded around them and mulched the area. A farmer had donated wool dags to put around the plants too. We worked for a whole day in this special 'koru garden,' an awesome outdoor learning space originally planted in 2017. The students loved using loppers to cut down big weed trees and grubbers to remove thick grass. They weeded and mulched lots of areas and finished with a nice cool ice cream for their hard work. It was special to have the Central Kids Reporoa Kindergarten tamariki join us too. This is a fantastic community space for tamariki to learn in and for native wildlife to thrive in. We are happy to support the school to involve tamariki in the maintainance of it when we can.