Bronwyn Graham has been nominated. You can see Bronwyn’s video at https://www.facebook.com/environmentsouthland/videos/277067659801226/
Bronwyn has helped with every school group attending the Nursery and Education Centre over the past 5 years – that’s over 5000 children. As well as this she has run the Forest and Bird Kiwi Conservation Club events. If she doesn’t win an award tonight she is still an absolute legend!
The next event is the Eco-Fun Family day on 4th November starting at the Education Centre and taking in Bushy Point. Event starts at 1pm - pick up your passport from the Community Nursery Education Centre - park at 183 Grant Road, Otatara carpark.
Posted: 24 October 2018
On Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 October an enthusiastic group were welcomed to the Education Centre by tutor Peter Handford. Environment Southland’s Ali Meade had arranged for Peter to come down from Nelson to tutor this national course about 5 Minute Bird Counts. It was a combination of learning in the education centre – presentations and computer bird calls and identification modules and then putting the learning into practice in the field. I think at the end we all appreciated the skill involved in the bird counts, the rigor with which the technique is applied, the skill involved in identifying the calls and the accurate recording of the data. When in the bush it is the calls rather than the sighting of the birds which is most important. Five minutes is quite a long time when you are concentrating hard on identifying through sight and sound (calls and flight noise) from different directions and trying to establish the number of birds calling from each direction. Thanks Peter for your information, encouragement and good humour!
Posted: 24 October 2018
The nursery volunteers are busy each Friday morning with lots of spring tasks. Seedlings are sprouting, weeds are growing and potting is going on apace, we have even had to water the nursery (very early in the season). Volunteers on a Friday can take away some plants for free for their efforts and we are selling plants at $5 each PB3 size pots. We have had some big sales for spring planting so be in soon if you want plants that are ready now. Amongst all this activity there has been the Bushy Point planting day where the 29000th native plant has been planted. All plants grown in the Community Nursery by Linda and Ray – a massive effort.
Posted: 24 October 2018
Over a couple of days in September Kate De Silva came and re-measured the four vegetation plots in our covenant and at Bushy Point. The research is under the Urban Research Programme – Bushy Point Restoration Sites – Waikato University - People, Cities & Nature (Restoring indigenous nature in urban environments) https://www.peoplecitiesnature.co.nz. There are plots throughout the country to study how light, microclimate, and understorey conditions change over the first 40 years of development in a restoration project. Six months of ground temperature was downloaded directly from an “ibutton” and other vegetation parameters were measured.
Posted: 24 October 2018
After lunch we had a group of students from the Southern Institute of Technology, studying in the Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Health Sciences (Wellness and Rehabilitation) Programme. This group came to the community nursery to explore being in nature and how this links to wellness. We went for a walk through the orchard, looked at the vege gardens and worm farm and went on the bush walk past the 20-25 year old plantings and into the mature kahikatea swamp forest to soak up the grandeur of 400 year old trees. This was great to get a sense of why we do what we do in the nursery…to grow trees to plant out, to grow into forests that give us the experiences that existing areas of remnant forests do. Linda also came over to the Nature Centre and gave her perspectives on the benefits of nature for physical and mental wellbeing. We also talked about Bushy Point reserve – what is happening at this site with rehabilitation/restoration and conservation of the local natural environment. Their next visit we will do some hands-on experience of nursery life.
Bronwyn and Chris
Posted: 5 September 2018
