Protected: DRAFT Course Module 1: Arena
Protected: DRAFT Honeysuckle
Protected: DRAFT Kikuyu
New life every autumn, including Kauri seedlings
Autumn and winter are my favourite times for restoration work. Everywhere native tree seedlings are popping up and, if recognised and protected, extend the wild habitats they spring from.
Manuka seedlings arise in bare sun-exposed clay, or as below, in manuka leaf litter on the outer edge of manuka “scrub”:
Karamu are abundant anywhere blackbirds visit
Totara, houpara and mapou appear under trees and among tall leafy plants (including weeds). These two mapou are under a mahoe tree
and occasionally, even in highly landscaped gardens within bird-reach of a forest fragment, we find the fern-like tanekaha seedling.
The tanekaha below is probably 2 or 3 years old, (with two little karamu seedlings above it).
On the edges of kauri forest fragments, kauri seedlings are scattered wherever the surface layer of humus (rotted leaf litter) has lain undisturbed for several months.
This one is no surprise – in a deep bed of leaf litter beneath a kauri and a tanekaha. You can see the smooth shallow hollows in the scales of fallen kauri cones that fell here, (as well as the frilly-edged stem-tips of tanekaha – which we usually refer to as leaves, though they are technically not leaves but stem-tips) (For extra points, spot the two tiny green kawakawa seedlings:)
But kauri can germinate in many types of surface, even bare clay after construction, esecially if there is a bit of organic debris to feed and shelter them.
It’s hard to believe that each giant kauri tree in our remaining forest fragments grew from simple and unassuming seedlings like these.
Even more gratifying to see a kauri seedling appear this autumn in the space between rotting wild ginger tubers! (No chemicals used, no digging or yanking, just our fold-down technique that rots the whole clump out over a few years).
I have seen dozens of kauri seedlings appear each year in a few metres of partly shaded lawn in a garden bordering a kauri forest reserve…. to be either mown to maintain a lawn, or weeded carefully and supported with other native regeneration, to begin a new little patch of forest.
In Gahnia Grove in Eskdale Reserve, a single kauri seedling appeared in 2020 under a small shrub (a planted Cook Island Flax) only 2 metres from the mown playing field on Glenfield Rd.
The nearest kauri old enough to bear cones is about 100m away from this seedling.
Weeding continues to protect this kauri seedling, and the native plants that nursed it while it germinated are pruned to give this enterprising kauri seedling ongoing space, shelter, light and protection from human activity.
Book a private or group assessment if you would like the hidden or unrecognised native plants revealed and identified in your garden or Reserve.
For neighbourhood groups restoring their local Reserve, it is essential to do this assessment both before and throughout planning or undertaking weed control, because without thorough knowledge of the existing habitat, more wild native vegetation is likely to be lost during weeding and planting than can be successfully established by planting.
The same applies to home gardens, where free native plants can save a lot of money!
Collecting questions at the Plant Stand
At our winter plant stands on Glenfield Rd last year we enjoyed answering many questions about how we restore wild native plant communities (eg Gahnia Grove in Eskdale Reserve, where we hold the plant stands).
It takes more than a few minutes to answer such questions fully enough for people to be able to manage their own weed control using this method of plant identification and hand weeding.
To help meet the demand for more teaching and demonstration of the techniques and strategies we use, we have asked a friend to collect your questions and areas of interest, so we can answer your questions through demonstration and illustration in a co-ordinated way.
We will both be at the Plant Stand (opposite the petrol station on Glenfield Rd) from 11.00 am to 12.30pm this Sunday.
Meanwhile, our usual small range of locally ecosourced native plants will be on sale until about 3pm, weather permitting.
More about chemical-free weed control and habitat restoration at northshorewilds.co.nz
Kawakawa ready to plant
Our plant stand will be open again tomorrow Sunday, beside Eskdale Reserve and roughly opposite the petrol station in Glenfield Rd.
The $3 Kawakawa are quite large now, but we only have a few dozen left.
Carex flagellifera and Carex lambertiana $5 each
And a few bits and pieces…all wild natives grown from local eco sourced seed ( with a few exceptions, from cultivated stock, which we always point out). Seedlings in this bunch Including tōtara, mapou, karamu (Coprosma). We also have a few pots of the tiny mat-forming Carex inversa for fillings cracks and bare spots, and can be walked on or mown.
Native plant sale and gift cards
At last autumn rains have saturated the soil, loosening weeds and opening the soil for planting.
Tomorrow, Sunday 11th May (Mothers’ Day), we will once again hold the North Shore Wilds roadside native plant stand at Gahnia Grove, our restoration site in Eskdale Reserve, (around 230 Glenfield Rd, near the petrol station).
Small Kawakawa from $3 each or 4 for $10, Carex flagellifera from $5, larger kawakawa and Carex $8 and $10, plus Scrambling Fuchsia and a few other bits and pieces.
Also for sale will be our specially printed Gift Cards for a home garden ecology assessment, discovering hidden and unknown native ground covers, grasses and shrubs, identifying the weeds, and suggesting a strategy of natural, low-energy techniques for replacement of weeds by a diverse, healthy native plant community, with specific techniques of manual weed control. for kikuyu, Tradescantia, ginger, privets, weed vines, or whatever you have.
Conditions are now ideal for weeding, so between customers we are likely to be rolling back the kikuyu, or even hidden among the bushes as we discover this year’s new native seedlings as we weed. We keep a fairly close eye onthe stand, but if we don’t see you arrive, just call out or phone 021485994, and we will appear within seconds:)
Gift cards for Garden Ecology Assessment and Advice
We have provided this unique service for the last year or so, and it has been very successful, both for those wanting to learn how to manage weeds without chemicals and restore native ecology to their properties and the surrounding area, and those who want to find out how much it would cost to have us do this for or with them.
We schedule a 1.5 hour site visit at the resident’s convenience, to learn and share understanding of the site’s potential for natural wild plant communities and techniques for the control of any specific problem plants.
We point out the wild native plants already present but often unrecognised, like this kauri seedling in native “milk moss”:
The resident is empowered in their own land management by the identification of weeds and native plants and an understanding of how these can be controlled through simple economical landcare practices such as mulching, composting weeds where they fall instead of paying for their removal, and conserving live healthy soil.
We demonstrate simple effective techniques for the control of specific weeds, such as kikuyu, Tradescantia, honeysuckle and privets.
Below: The dead stump of a Chinese privet tree, killed over several months by partial severance and breakdown of branches (“PSB”), a pruning technique we developed to eradicate weed trees economically without chemicals
Though many, many people have said they would like us to do this for them, and it can save a lot of money in future weed control and landcare costs, it is a luxury for many, so we hope this Gift Card will reach some of those keen to restore a bit of wild native habitat to their garden or bush edge.
In purchasing our Gift Card (with envelope) for $150, you are prepaying for a single visit to an address in the North Shore area. After receiving the Gift Card, the resident can tell us their needs and their contact details whenever they are ready (though we can only guarantee our availability for the next 3 months).
To be sure we can fit all the Assessments into our available time over the next 3 months, we have only printed 10 cards, so order quickly if you would like to purchase one.
When the recipient has received the Gift Card, they can contact us directly to schedule their Assessment for any time in the next 3 months. The 1.5 hour home session fee includes a follow-up email with any additional plant identifications, photos and advice.
Moss Island
The weedy grass area on the left was later cordoned to become part of “Cherry Bay”, and in late 2020 Moss island was created there.
Cherry Bay is the whole area behind the cordon on the right, visible from the lower right-hand corner of the upper field of Eskdale Reserve in Glenfield Rd
In 2020 during Auckland Council’s construction of a new forest track for cyclists and pedestrians, we asked their contractor RAM Contracting if they could save a little of the beautiful moss-covered clay bank which had to be excavated to widen, pave and channel the track for its new use.
The RAM Contracting team kindly agreed, and brought a digger load of large clay pieces out of the forest to the edge of the playing field below Glenfield Rd.
At our request they placed the pieces together in “Cherry Bay”, a damp weed-grass covered area just behind the Gahnia Grove cordon (see photos at top of page), where we could weed around it a few times a year while observing what happened to its covering of native mosses and gum-lands tree and shrub seedlings.
Below, some close-ups of Moss Island in March 2021.
The big vine and shrub weeds and most of the tree weeds had been manually controlled in Cherry Bay in 2019, and wild revegetation was progressing well, but this particular part of it had little shade overhead, and gets very wet in winter, so it fills with Creeping buttercup and grasses every autumn.
The buttercups creep into the mossy clay and are weeded out by hand, and the “sea” of weeds around the “island” of native forest, so we keep the weeds down with a heavy mulch of dead wood, cherry and harakeke prunings, pine litter from under nearby pines, and any weeds that can be easily uprooted or cut down around it.
As expected, the larger tree seedlings growing in the clay pieces died not long after, but the native “milk moss” (Leucobryum javense) and many of the native tree and shrub seedlings are thriving, four years after translocation of their clay bed.
We are grateful to RAM Contracting for their understanding of and collaboration with the Gahnia Grove restoration project’s objectives, and their cheerful contribution of time and equipment in creating Moss Island.
Thank you RAM Contracting!
