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Tuesday 9am - 12pm Thursday 9am - 12pm

Cambridge Tree Trust

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Cambridge Tree Trust

The aim of the Trust is to plant trees and shrubs in and around Cambridge; to enhance the approaches

11/06/2026

Thursday, 11th June 2026. Today started with a cold frosty morning, and that, along with Fieldays in full swing, kept our numbers down. Some of us help out at Fieldays and some of us go there. It's a major event.

9 of us had an energetic and productive morning spreading mulch around the trees in the McLean St. dog park. Nothing major, but the previous mulch had largely disappeared and needed replacement.

The Council's frontend loader was pressed into service, thanks to the cooperation of Parks Dept. staff, and we loaded the truck and trailer with woodchip mulch. The dog park is flat, so we could drive around the field, stopping at each tree.

Dog walkers stopped and chatted as they passed. Several of us have dogs, so there was a lot to talk about. It was an enjoyable morning, and morning tea just put the icing on the cake.

09/06/2026

Tuesday, 9th June. We went to the RDA paddock at the end of Vogel St. to finish off the piles of mulch that were placed there for us.

We should have brought more than 3 barrows since there was a fair bit of walking for the barrowers and the shovellers got long rests, but even so, the job was done by 10:30.

We'll probably get some more mulch in, and there's still the heap on the hillside to deal with. We're not looking forward to that.

04/06/2026

The first week of June. Only 3 more weeks until the days start getting longer and the real winter sets in.

Tuesday's weather started badly. A few hardy souls turned up, but the ground was soggy from the night's rain and there was a threat of more to come. We gave ourselves an early cup of coffee.

Then the weather cleared. Conditions in the field would have been wet, so we stayed at the nursery and took the opportunity to w**d the flax bed and put some more flaxes in. They'd been dug up from the Totara Grove when we tidied that up and they'll serve elsewhere, probably at the RDA paddock, which is pretty wet.

That's where we went on Thursday and spent an hour and a half spreading mulch around the plantings on the flat by the fence. Then more rain came, and since we were wearing out by then, we went back to base for morning tea.

27/05/2026

Thursday, May 28th. More mulching, this time at the Pump Park behind the swimming pool.

The spray we used on the convolvulus has done a wonderful job, so we can now mulch the area. It's tricky to get to with the truck, but 4-wheel drive makes it possible.

For our first load, a kind Council worker loaded out truck and trailer for us with a front-end loader. The second load on the truck had to be loaded the hard way, with shovels, but we got 2 truckloads and one trailer load spread by 10:20.

26/05/2026

26th of May, and we're spreading mulch again. This time we're cleaning up the two heaps beside McLean's Drain that were left over from our efforts a few weeks ago.

The plantings by the drain had been mulched as far as we wanted to go, so we mulched the adjacent part of Jane's Lane. It had been sprayed, and for once the weather allowed us to spread mulch at the right time. It involved a lot of barrowing, and morning tea was welcome.

21/05/2026

Thursday 20th May. We didn't go mulching, despite having a lot to do at the old RDA paddock. Instead, we did some pruning at the Totara Grove.

There had been complaints to both us and the Council about youths using drugs in the grove and women who walked their dogs and went on runs or just plain walks were feeling intimidated.

The only drug we found evidence of was nitrous oxide. The little containers were plentiful.

The youths had made a nice place for themselves. They'd chopped down 3 or 4 trees and made a nice 2-level seat and a tent of leafy branches. All very cozy, and if they'd been polite to passers-by all might have been well.

However, they weren't, and Council staff pulled down most of the seating and the tent. We finished the job and trimmed the lower branches of the trees to give better visibility into the grove. We'll finish the work over the next 2 or 3 sessions. It's a big job.

19/05/2026

Tuesday, May 18th, saw 18 of us mulching the trees in the little park next to our nursery in Thornton Rd.

Bagging mulch has always been a chore. We tried loading it directly onto the truck when we had the full-sized 6-ton truck, and it was very hard work lifting shovelfuls of mulch high up and over the side.

However, our truck now is ute sized, and much lower to the ground. We filled it, Eric's ute and the trailer twice over without any trouble at all and had all the mulching done by 10:30. Truly, many hands make light work.

Somebody forgot his camera this morning, so there are no photos. Sorry about that.

14/05/2026

Thursday, 14th May, we went back to McLean's Drain and did some more mulching. We did a bit of infill planting too, but not much.

We'd done the basic mulching, putting it around the plants. This time we covered the whole planting. It was another barrowing exercise, but this time we supplemented the barrows with the truck and that made the job much easier. Done and dusted by morning tea time.

13/05/2026

Tuesday, May 12th. We had a bit more planting to do on the RDA paddock. We loaded up the truck with some of the bigger trees that needed to get into the ground and spent some time planting them. The digging was fairly easy this time, on the lower part of the slope. There was hardly any of the roading debris we'd encountered further up.

Once the planting was finished, we tackled the job we'd been putting off for some time: spreading the mulch.

Someone had put a pile of woodchip mulch at the bottom of the planting area. We had to barrow it uphill. It was done, often by having someone push the barrow while another person pulled it. The younger and stronger people could push or pull the barrows single-handed, but even they found it hard work.

We put the mulch around the plants. Later, we'll spread the rest of it over the area. It needs spraying first. Convolvulus and couch grass are regrowing strongly.

06/05/2026

7th May, Thursday, and we're doing some more planting at RDA. The digging becomes easier as we go down the hill. The roading debris is on a heap at the top. It's a big heap, so we had a lot of trouble.

We put a few more plants into the bottom planting by the swamp, just to fill in the space. We were finished by 10:30, in more ways than one for some of us, and morning tea was welcome.

Address

89 Thornton Road
Cambridge
3432

Opening Hours

Tuesday	9am - 12pm
Thursday	9am - 12pm

Website

http://www.treetrust.org.nz/

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