For the last ten years or so, my colleague Wayne Rimmer, Principal L/S Architect, NZILA (Registered) has arranged for the Opus Chch Environmental Team – us Landscape Architects, Env Engineers, Planners, Archaeologists and others; 40-45 in total – to do a ‘planting day’ (…it’s usually an afternoon at the end of the working week) for Christchurch City Council within one of the Council’s reserves. Currently CCC provide the plants and Opus provides the labour and food and beverage for the barbeque that follows…

Pre-quake we did native re-veg planting in the Horseshoe Lake Reserve, Burwood, Chch, then around the Styx Mill Reserve predator-proof fence and then after the quake, along various sections of the banks of the Styx River and its major tributary, Kaputone Stream. With 1,500 – 2,000 plants for each year, approximately 18-20,000 plants have now been planted.

The most recent ‘planting day’ was on the afternoon of Wednesday, 4 October at a site just off Belfast Road adjoining Kaputone Stream and the newly expanded Belfast Cemetery reserve and not far from the NZ Transport Agency’s Christchurch Northern Corridor highway that is currently under construction. This planting was under the direction of Dr Antony Shadbolt, CCC’s Landscape Ecologist and was filmed by a team from the Ministry of Environment.

The following video “Trees that count” tells the story…