Seven Kahikatea trees planted this week. My tree planting adventure continues.

I am planting a Kahikatea or Rimu into the Kahurangi National Park for every jewellery online order.

I am looking forward to planting thousands.

Why am I doing this?

I first had the idea in early summer 2016. I have been having discussions with my neighbour Dick Nicholls as to the hopeful outcomes of the massive Milnthorpe regeneration project. Dick, with helpers, over a forty year period has planted hundreds of thousands of  Australian pioneering trees in order to establish a canopy. The outcome is hoped to see a podocarp forest emerge from under this canopy, some planted, most self sown by the big influx of birds who occupy this new canopy. They bring the seeds in from the wider bush environs.

In the neighbouring bush hills surrounding Mt Rinopai, my house and workshop, the native pioneer canopy of Manuka and Kanuka is well established with many green leafed natives like Kamahi,  Muhoe and others. Already there is a sprinkling of podocarp seedlings emerging. Rimu are in many places succeeding the pioneer canopy. Miro, Totara, Kahikatea, are also evident.

My idea is to just augment the natural process. Take some time to do a good planting job and basically just fill in the gaps in the natural reseeding that is nature's regeneration project.

Why plant in the Kahurangi national Park?

I have my own parcel of land that is covered in regenerating Kanuka and Manuka. So I could plant here on my property. And I will for my own garden. However the lifespan of these podocarp native trees are hundreds of years. It is so hard to know how land ownership will proceed into the future and so I thought it made more sense to plant into the national park where the protections are in place. But still who knows how that changes as the decades go by.

There will be many threats to the life of these young trees, some natural , some human influenced. I just want to do it.

So every online jewellery order sees a podocarp planted into the Kahurangi National park. Over thirty trees planted already so keep the orders coming. I will keep planting.