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.
Native Plants and gift cards for sale
We will have our limited range of locally-native ecosourced plants for sale beside the Strawberry Stand as and when possible from now until Xmas, but the roadside is often crowded, and/or too hot for the plants and myself, so if you would like to buy plants via email we can arrange to deliver them to the Eskdale Reserve roadside, or you can pick them up from our little nursery in Windy Ridge.
We also have for sale ten gift cards (with envelope), for our popular Garden Ecology Assessment by appointment at the recipient’s home, including plant identification and advice on chemical-free weed control for your property.
Plants available for immediate sale include:
Native sedges, or “grasses” as they are often referred to, popular in landscaping and ideal for absorbing heavy rain and preventing erosion, are hardy and self-maintaining.
Carex flagellifera from $3 each or 10 for $25…
….in 8cm pots for $5 each or 10 for $40 ….
Here are some of them lined up in front of Grandma and Grandpa, who are about 80cm high.
Carex flagellifera multiply both through division and by seed.
Kawakawa
We always suggest planting kawakawa in partial to full shade, keeping soil moist in summer, and buying a few to ensure having both a male and a female tree.
$5 each for 10cm pots…
8cm pots from $3 each or 4 for $10…
…or $10 each in 1-2L pots
Fuchsia procumbens / Scrambling Fuchsia – a pretty little creeper with tiny “ballerina” flowers to look out for in summer (but there are none on this young plant yet:) These Fuchsia plants are not ecosourced, but it is a locally native species)
This native species scrambles through undergrowth for up to several metres in sun or partial shade, and climbs to about a metre in places, but doesn’t get ouot of hand and dominate other plants. Our plants are grown by layering from this specimen (below) which has been growing beside this gatepost for about 20 years. Smaller shoots have climbed to about the same height – about 40cm – on the other side of the fence, but it has not spread more than a metre into the garden to the right.
We also have a few native trees , shrubs and ground covers of various kinds, including karaka, mapou, totara ti kouka, karamu, houpara and the tiny native sedge Carex inversa, which is good for filling cracks with its spreading rhizomes that help keep out the less attractive wildings such as dandelion, dock etc.
Contact us with orders or any queries.
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!
End-of-winter sale – Native plants half-price tomorrow on Glenfield Rd
Tomorrow, Sunday 1st September, we will be selling our remaining large Kawakawa and Carex flagellifera at half-price: $5 for the 12-15cm pots and $4 for the 10cm pots, at our native plant stand on Glenfield Rd opposite the petrol station….while stocks last.
Kawakawa fruit are a big drawcard for kereru. Male and female trees are needed for fruiting, and you can’t tell which is which until they flower at about 4 years of age, so plant half a dozen. They grow in sun or shade but do best in part shade, and need moist soil in summer. The kawakawa left of centre and on the right below are growing wild among Carex and other natives.
Carex flagellifera self-seed and multiply by division, filling a space to hold the soil and crowd out weeds . They are tolerant of dry or wet soil, in full sun or part shade. These have multiplied in a gap between harakeke on Glenfield Rd, and karamu are growing wild with them:
