1,164 for the year
The 2026 planting season reached 1,164 plants — and with the nursery running short, we are buying plants in to grow on for next winter.
The plant tally for 2026 is 1,164.
Since the last report there was one working bee, on 23 August, abandoned early when the weather changed — 94 plants. The mid-week team of eight has managed three plantings: 32 on 18 August, 70 on 25 August and 54 on 2 September.
It is encouraging to see the enthusiasm of those that turn up. We seem to have a number of young families attending with children in tow.
The constraint is plants, and then labour
The stock at the Forest & Bird nursery in the Oamaru Public Gardens is running down — “looking depleted with mainly Pitosporums and a smaller range of other plants”. So we resolved to buy plants to grow on for next season, and to buy some ready to go in that add to the diversity, with a field trip to two commercial nurseries planned, and authorised the spending to do it.
Beyond that, the honest limit on how fast this hillside gets planted is not money for plants. It is people’s time. The group plants roughly 1,500 trees a winter at present. The long-term target in its own costed plan is 20,000.
And the part that is not in any report
At most plantings we have people commenting positively and offering to help.
After that weekend’s planting one person donated enough to buy the planters a beer afterwards, and a family who cannot physically help donated for plants instead.
The 2026 figure here is the tally as at 10 September, with more planting scheduled after it.