31/05/2026
"He aha te mea nui o te ao? Māku e kī atu, He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata!”
"What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people!"
This is the phrase ringing through my head after such a tremendous planting day of wonderful community effort for our Fraser Farm Wetland Restoration project on Friday.
Planting 4,500 plants over almost 1 Ha, on sometimes tricky terrain was a phenomenal achievement. Pretty much everyone put in a solid 3 hours before heading uphill for some sustenance. And then those hardcore folk that kept going when we thought we wouldn't quite get all the plants in, just totally smashed it – a superhuman effort!
Overall, this project was made possible because of the huge committment and support of a number of people.
First and foremost to the farm owner Dave Fraser who throughout at times a difficult planning process, stuck with it and all of us, because the bigger environmental outcomes mattered greatly to him. To the farm manager Damon who worked around our various site visits and even had his family planting alongside us on Friday. Will, his farm worker, and his partner, who joined in to lend a hand in the mud. To Gordie our amazing fencer who built the best stile I’ve ever seen to facilitate access on the day (and protect his beautiful fence)
To Whangateau Catchment Collective especially Duncan Kevell and Alicia Bullock for her committment to TLC in a joint land/watercare collaboration; Auckland Council's Rebecca Kemp championing our project and allocating funding for it from Rodney Local Board and Katie Owen, for so much ecological advice and allocating additional funding for fence extensions and navigating reglatory wrangling. To Rhonda from ReForest Native Plants for growing great quality natives to order for us.
To my Takatu Landcare committee for your support and jumping into any role I needed you to do - transporting and laying out thousands of plants and lugging lots of gear about before and after the event. Paul Beigle - your LUV was indispensible as you were for this sites logisitcs!
To the folk who travelled over an hour to be part of the day - Lena and Teā Tapurau from over on the West Coast, the six Auckland Council Healthy Waters staff who committed their Council Community Day to our project and were there helping until the end. Amazing!
To Mark Atkinson for all your help with literally everything – site prep spraying (20hrs), plant spacing advice, implements, logistics, packdown and banter!
To our Auger wielding ladies! Sue Crawshay on the day before planting and Frankie Hofland on the day itself - a big reason we got all the plants in the ground
To Jackie Russell who saved me from dealing with the portaloo before and after the event!
Sally Richardson and Margot Rawlings our indispensible caterers and expert BBQrs on the day.
To Julian Oes, for taking time out to provide us with some amazing drone footage.
To Restore Rodney East for loaning us the trailer, BBQ, the gazebos, tables and spades and more!
To Colin Wards who couldnt be there but sent mandarins to sustain planters and all those wonderful bakers of cakes/biscuits/asparagus rolls, Kathy, Elspeth, Sue, Hamish and probably more, who provided us with much needed sustenance – THANK YOU!
And last but certainly not least, to all our 56 volunteers on the day who put so much sweat and muscle into getting the planting over the line, THANK YOU, we needed every last one of you!
Karen Ward, TLC Community Coordinator
