Training Course
We are preparing a comprehensive training course in the methods and techniques we use to restore native vegetation to forest margins and plantings overwhelmed by weeds -vine, tree, shrub and grass weeds, including areas of both mown and uncontrolled kikuyu.
The course will be based on Gahnia Grove, our Chemical-Free Restoration Methodology Demonstration site in Glenfield Rd, Eskdale Reserve.
No specialized knowledge or skill is required to take part in the course, which covers some of the basic principles of gardening, weed control, landcare for conservation of soil and water, and passive ecological restoration.
We hare planning Modules covering all categories of invasive weeds affecting our local gardens, parks, natural reserves and waterways, as well as our understanding and experience of passive restoration and native forest succession.
Since the question we are most commonly asked is, “how do you control the kikuyu?”, the first Course module will teach our method of no-dig, no-cut, no-spray kikuyu control, including the strategy, planning and techniques we used in Gahnia Grove and elsewhere for eradication of kikuyu from the entire cordoned area.
eg the “Arena”, shown below in June 2018. The kikuyu was mown behind the camera, spreading uncontrolled down this steep bank, where it was mixed with honeysuckle and blackberry:
In January 2026, the same view shows the same karamu (extreme right), now much taller and wider, its outreaching older branches now leafless, its leafy canopy still nursing native tree seedlings, groundcovers and ferns, which are abundant all over the bank, especially under the ti kouka shown top right in the 2018 photo (now twice its 2018 height and with five upright trunks, their bases barely visible in the background of the below photo)
Control without eradication
For control of kikuyu at the margin of areas where kikuyu is to be retained, perhaps controlled by mowing, we teach strategies and techniques for ongoing use in preventing reinvasion of the cleared area. We use these strategies and techniques along the 160m cordoned margin of Gahnia Grove, where the kikuyu is mown regularly by Council for public recreational use of the ridge-top edge of Eskdale Reserve opposite 227-235 Glenfield Road, where strawberries and takeaway meals are sold by street vendors.
Arena kikuyu margin 2018
Arena kikuyu margin May 2019
Arena kikuyu margin Dec 2019
Arena kikuyu margin July 2020
Arena kikuyu margin May 2021
Arena kikuyu margin Dec 2022
Arena kikuyu margin Dec 2023
Arena kikuyu margin June 2025
Arena kikuyu margin January 2026
Through a series of site tours, demonstrations and online posts, the Kikuyu Module of our training course explains the history of the methodology and site, and teaches the strategies and techniques for the Pull-back method of kikuyu control or eradication.
Eskdale Reserve Training Site
The various stages of pull-back will be demonstrated at our Eskdale Reserve Training site, opposite 225 Glenfield Rd, where an “island” of native trees – along with the usual bird-borne weeds, is surrounded by neatly mown kikuyu, which spreads uncontrolled among the vegetation beyond the reach of the mower:
To demonstrate the necessary site preparation and sequence of interventions, we have established a second cordoned site, along the adjacent roadside edge of Eskdale Reserve opposite 219-225 Glenfield Rd.
with a West-facing margin bordering the recreational grass field just down the hill.
This site has been prepared and maintained so that people can observe the progress of kikuyu control from start to finish, and Course participants can watch a series demonstrations of all aspects of the technique, including plant identification for revegetation planning.
Students of the Pull-back Method will be helped to understand the process through seeing the results at various stages, probably in 3 or 4 site visits over 4-6 weeks.
The week before each site visit, Course participants will be given access to online Posts here on the North Shore Wilds website, accessible only to the Course members and illustrated with photos and videos, for clarification of the restoration history, methodology and techniques discussed and demonstrated on site tours.
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!
Pathside vegetation flourishing along the upper Eskdale Forest track alongside Gahnia Grove
Along the new track through the upper margin of Eskdale Forest, bare clay is turning to a variety of native plants, many of which only grow in kauri forest. These gracefully drooping young plants hanging over the edge of the track are Gahnia xanthocarpa, sometimes called “giant cutty grass”, a typical component of kauri forest where sun reaches the forest floor.
Almost impossible to propagate, they are so well-designed for the harsh environment of low-fertility kauri lands that they have sprouted up all along the exposed clay banks lining the track across the top of the ridge.
There are a few adult plants among them, their black seeds hanging from tall brittle stems.
To fully appreciate the value and beauty of this pathside vegetation, see the same bank below in November 2020 during track construction, when this section of rutted clay bank had suffered temporary loss of even more of its trees, shrubs, sedges, ferns, creepers and mosses.
Look for even greater beauty and diversity as the years pass. For example, tiny native orchids depend on the ground being undisturbed, as they only appear above ground during winter. Where old ground has remained undisturbed, they can be seen along the path on almost vertical banks, vitally protected by fallen ponga fronds and leaf litter caught in the undergrowth.
This Grass-leaved greenhood orchid (Pterostylis graminea), which we saw yesterday, has probably reached its full size at about 6cms tall.
Notes from Gahnia Grove
From time to time we feel moved to describe what we are seeing in our single-handed restoration project “Gahnia Grove“, covering about half a hectare of regenerating wild kauri forest along and below the Glenfield Rd margin of Eskdale Forest.
The site has three major sections – Tanekaha Ridge, Rimu Ridge, and Gahnia Grove-the-original-2018-roadside-site, in June 2018 almost nothing but vine, shrub and tree weeds with uncontrolled kikuyu tangled in honeysuckle and blackberry,
so that area was the most urgent, and made the most difference to the survival of the forest hidden behind it – see below:
At random, then, these notes from a visit last week to “Flame Tree Bank”, visible from the roadside just uphill from the strawberry stand:
Plant species diversity beginning to increase on Flame Tree Bank
Flame Tree Bank is part of the initial 2018 Gahnia Grove restoration project. It comprises the slope around the big stand of Flame, or “Coral”, trees, from the edge of the forest canopy, uphill to the recreational mown kikuyu area bordering Glenfield Rd, nearly opposite the petrol station.
In 2018 Flame Tree Bank was completely dominated by environmental weeds. The entire tangled mess, on a steep slope above regen kauri forest margin, was (and remains) overhung by invasive Flame trees. One of two trees planted in 1999 has spread through suckering and falling branches, becoming over 30 trees, most of them now occupying space in the canopy of regenerating kauri forest.
After a request to Council for intervention when we initiated our restoration of a section of forest margin we called Gahnia Grove, these trees were expected to be controlled by arborism.
Above: Flame Tree Bank in May 2018, with Elephant’s Ear, Arum lily, Cape Honey Flower, honeysuckle and Tradescantia, and kikuyu in the foreground
Below: Jan 2019: after honeysuckle was controlled by uprooting it wherever it was easy, and rolling it up, invasive bindweed took over.
The planned arborism would have destroyed or smothered much of any regen present by that time, so we did not attempt to maintain much weed control here till 2020, when it became apparent that there would be no Flame Tree control by Council.
( On the positive side, this meant the site was not subjected to the injection of poison prescribed to accompany the arborism. And over the years since 2018, necessity being the mother of invention, we have discovered we can manually control all but the largest trees, through partial breaking of branches and ringbarking of small trunks and lower branches, both of which procedures appear to have suppressed or slowed growth in the large trees of the smaller stands, while eliminating the small trees in the forest itself).
So in 2018-19 on Flame Tree Bank we controlled only honeysuckle, bindweed, ginger, Alocasia, Arum, moth plant, extensions of Flame Tree invasion, and kikuyu, allowing the more benign weeds including Tradescantia to maintain ground cover and suppress spread of environmental weeds.
Above: The second image shows Flame Tree Bank in October 2021, after control of vine and shrub weeds, with only a few wild native plants (shrubby toatoa and karamu) emerging so far among the ground-covering weeds .
(The top half of the cabbage tree on the right was knocked off by a falling Flame Tree in 2020, so it is now half the size, and has grown a new head)
During hundreds of explorations and interventions, only 12 wild native plant species were observed on this bank from 2018-2023. In addition to the wild regen, only a dozen or so 10cm H nikau seedlings were planted.
The new wild native species seen were very young seedlings released from Tradescantia in 2019
and later dying (due to natural attrition or drought). These seedlings were ti kouka/cabbage tree, karamu, and a few kahikatea.
The forest canopy edge down the bank had been released from Tradescantia in late 2018, and the same species of seedlings were found beneath Tradescantia regrowth in 2019:
This week, under the shelter of the rapidly developing regen spreading from the boundary of Flame Tree Bank top with the adjacent Cape Honey Flower (CHF) Bank top, we found:
- a single mapou seedling
- a single Pteris tremula sporeling
- 2 Hebe (Veronica stricta) seedlings
and several Carex lambertiana – with more karamu seedlings, which have become common on Flame Tree Bank since 2022.
These 4 modest finds are all well-situated among 2-3 year-old native regen not likely to be overtaken by weed, drought or flood, and while not extraordinary or even of note in other situations, they indicate significant progress here.
A very weedy site gives enormous rewards, through the contrast of ugliness, waste and destruction with the harmony seen in emerging native plant communities, and the lush growth in sheltered soil enriched with the composting weed material.
We hope to find time to present some other views of Gahnia Grove before, during and after the ongoing restoration.
Public projects
North Shore Wilds is an independent landcare and conservation education enterprise owned and operated by Jenny Christianson. Prior to advertising the current services of North Shore Wilds to the public, as a resident she initiated and led two well-known restoration projects on land owned by the public and managed by North Shore City Council until 2009 then by Auckland Council:
1997-2002
Kaipatiki Creek Restoration Project,
Witheford Scenic Reserve and Kaipatiki Esplanade Reserve, Kaipatiki Rd, Glenfield
2018 – ongoing
Gahnia Grove Chemical-free Restoration Methodology Trial Project
Eskdale Reserve, Glenfield Rd, in the neighbourhood of Glenfield, Hillcrest and Birkenhead
Native restoration through wild revegetation
Wild revegetation does not disturb existing plant roots or soil, is generally perfectly sited both in terms of its genetic adaptation to the area and the micro-site. Compared to seedlings grown in a loose potting mix, wild seedlings have diverse root structures developed to follow the micro-channnels of moisture, nutrients and sub-surface fungal networks, holding them fast to dense clay and making them resilient to drought. They are also the survivors of the battle to germinate and grow at all, often among hundreds of seeds which failed.
And the first wild regeneration is, naturally enough, largely composed of the “pioneer” species; those that are hardy, resilient and quick-growing, producing the shelter and shade, and eventually a low canopy, for longer-lived and more sensitive species.
Provided for free through handweeding, and needing no transportation or planting, wild seedlings and sporelings are the most cost-effective way to cover an area with a diverse locally-native plant community.
But where there is a large space to fill as quickly as possible, the planting of some larger specimens will definitely hasten the development of full soil coverage — ie shade and protection for wild regeneration, and habitat for critters… and reduce weed reinvasion.
In bare, ie weeded, areas where you can easily dig a trowel-depth for easy planting of a small plant, it can be well worthwhile.
As to a wider variety of suitable plants, you will find lots of suggestions from the people who sell them
Shrubby toatoa/Haloragis erecta – the busiest volunteer, and the restorationist’s friend
This modest plant was pointed out to me on the Kaipatiki Creek restoration site in 1998 by NZ native nursery pioneer Geoff Davidson : a very quick growing and self-spreading short-live perennial, extremely beneficial in restoration as it provides shelter that nurses wild or planted seedlings.
The bright green foliage is very pretty when bushy and leafy.
It gets leggy in the the first year or two, but can be kept compact with pruning if time permits. The stems are slender, becoming woody after about a year, when they can be snapped off or pruned with secateurs or shears, maintaining their leafiness if wanted, for instance in an ornamental garden border.
The tiny red flowers of toatoa are not obvious, but the bush acquires a reddish colour as the seeds mature.
An unpruned toatoa bush in full sun in moist soil can grow up to 2 metres high, but they are often kept smaller by the development of surrounding vegetation, and even the well-fed specimens usually die out out after a few years, exposing the native seedlings which by that time will be up to about a metre high, large enough for pioneer species like karamu, manuka or ti kouka (cabbage tree) to look after themselves.
Once you have it in your garden or forest margin, hundreds of seedlings will arise wherever soil is undisturbed under the toatoa plant itself or between other plants, with full or partial light.
The seedlings are easily transplanted to new areas when small.
Yuccas and Dragon trees grow wild in local forest edges
In 2018 we started to notice yuccas growing wild in local native forest reserves. The ones we saw were either hidden among native trees or inaccessible down steep banks or cliffs.
So when we saw these unfamiliar seedlings near the Kaipatiki Walkway along the estuarine shore, we suspected yucca.
We found a larger group of them a bit further downstream. Having been assured by botanists they were not native, we pulled out some of the larger group.
To find out what they were, we had to do some research. It included watching those seedlings until they were larger, but also, unexpectedly, finding a few unidentifiable hard-as-rock seeds dropped by kereru in our own garden,
then planting and growing these seeds on in a pot until they could be identified by an expert. (The one pictured above was dropped still encased in its fruity outer casing, but we opened it and found the same hard seed inside).
Turns out they were the same new invasive species as the unfamiliar seedlings we had found on the Kaipatiki estuary … Dragon tree (Dracaena draco).
The following year we found, identified and uprooted a single dragon tree seedling in the youngest outer edge, still mostly manuka, of Eskdale Forest.
And the next year, two more…and a single seed, (with several bangalow seeds, under the growing myna roost…which may be relevant?)
We suppose we should not be surprised that the kereru, lover of the fruits of nikau, puriri, karaka and taraire, nowadays finds as many if not more fruits on bangalow, Phoenix and queen palms; and instead of a side-dish of tataramoa, porokaiwhiri or kohia, the kereru swallows … and delivers by air … the seeds that will become yucca and dragon trees.
This year we found a single seedling further inside the forest…under the taller kanuka, which have now successfully burst through the canopy of the naturally-dying-out manuka.
Not a problem for our local ecology as long as every corner of every reserve, including gullies, streambanks and cliffs, is tended with care by an eagle-eyed weed seedling spotter.