'Rotary 100 Forests of Peace and Remembrance'

Rhondda Sweetman from Plimmerton Rotary

This is a good time to update club members about the 'Rotary 100 Forests of Peace and Remembrance' project. This is a New Zealand-wide project to celebrate the centenary of Rotary commencing in NZ and Australia.

Rotary is well advanced in discussions with the Ministry of Primary Industries for the Rotary 100 plantings to be funded from the Billion Trees programme.

We (RCoP) have got tentative approval from the Rotary 100 organisers, MPI and PCC for an additional planting area for Taupo Swamp. This would be for 10,000 wetland trees/plants to be planted around part of Plimmerton Domain that PCC will retire from sports field usage. PCC has recently completed building a dog exercising area on this sports field.

The proposal is to plant three sides of the outer edges of the new dog exercising park. The fourth side is fringed by Taupo Stream. We would plant species of plants and trees suited to local wetland conditions.

It’s an extremely easy area to plant as it’s been mown for several years for sports field use. It is flat with good soil and no weeds.

The Rotary Forest would be planted in parallel with the restoration and planting work already underway by ‘Friends of Taupo Swamp & Catchment’. It's envisaged that RCoP would plant several hundred plants in 2020 to prove that we have the capability, then plant 5000 in 2021 and 5000 in 2022.

The aerial photograph shows the sports field plus that part of Taupo Swamp that is owned by PCC (ignore the yellow elevation lines).

Also shown is the drain across the park and the initial planting area. We will start by planting on each side of the drain. We expect that over time, the drain will revert to being permanently wet.

What will we be needing from club members? We will need help with:

spot spraying of the planting spots
digging holes for the plants (post hole diggers)
planting/staking/protecting the plants and trees
a small amount of follow up weed control