Southland Community Nursery Opens Friday 16 January 2026
The Community Nursery will be open for volunteers on Friday 16 January 26. Come any time from 9am to noon. Shared morning teas are a highlight!
Jobs will include potting, weeding, moving plants in the nursery, trackwork and the start of seed collecting for the new season. Seeds from plants such as red tussock, toe toe, salt-marsh ribbonwood, Carex will all be ready to collect from our property.
Over the holidays there has been exceptional flowering of native plants. Some of the most spectacular have been the mistletoes and native brooms. The beech mistletoes in Southland are some of the best populations in the country – pictured below are pirita or scarlet mistletoe (Peraxilla colensoi) flowering near Riverton and piriraki, yellow mistletoe (Alepis flavida) flowering at Manapouri. We also have a range of native brooms flowering on our property at the moment with their purple or pink flowers. Those flowers are favoured by the tiny black native bees.
As well as having a relaxing time over the holidays we have been busy creating a new planting area with predominantly threatened plants. Thanks to nursery volunteer Peter we managed to shift 2 metres of mulch in double quick time after planting 80 or so plants the day before. Brian has also been very busy preparing the new pond area for planting, amongst other things! It is very encouraging that while we work around the created ponds we are now often accompanied by fernbirds. A few of this years fernbird pics below as well as a juvenile tui in the garden.
We hope you’ve had a restful break, ready to enjoy what 2026 has in store.
Chris and Brian
Posted: 13 January 2026