Green healers

Meet the propagators.  This team is flat out all year growing native trees, grasses, flaxes, sedges and rushes at the local Maori community ‘rūnaka’ (community council) plant nursery.  In this case they are jumping up behind a truck load of ‘oioi’ (Jointed wire rush, Apodasmia similis) which they delivered today for planting out in South Arm of Te Hakapupu Estuary, alongside our Tūmai farm park.
 
Oioi were eliminated from South Arm the estuary when it was cut off by a causeway in the 1950s for farming, and then had tidal flows re-instated in 2009. So we are putting oioi back into the restoring estuary – you can read more detail in my Blip “Mud pie” from 29th October.

We laid out stakes in a randomised block experiment design to mark where we would plant the rushes in the coming weeks.  The goal was to test where the rushes survive, grow and spread best in the estuary so that future restoration efforts can be more cost effective – so the project is a blend of research and actual restoration management … a “learning by doing” strategy.
 
The oioi planting has been long and a tad exhausting, and it’s the reason that I’ve had to step out of the Bliposphere for several weeks (and why I am now attempting to catch-up with some Back Blipping).  But somehow the hard physical work involved makes it all the more satisfying to see the plants in the ground (or mud in this case). Working together with like-minded people makes it all worthwhile.