On Saturday 21 March an enthusiastic team of planet rescuers from the Upper Hutt branch of Forest & Bird, GWRC and Heretaunga Community Church joined forces at Haukaretu Stream to remove a great pile of willow shoots, blackberry, tires and plastic and other rubbish from the stream and its surrounds.

GWRC had already done a lot of work cutting out all of the scrub, removing the willows and spraying the weeds.

Before and after photos of the Haukaretu Stream Restoration Site

However, it was amazing to see that even the smallest willow branch, if it is in or near the water, immediately sprouts and starts growing. We literally pulled out hundreds of willow seedlings that would have grown up and choked the stream worse than it ever was.

This weeding task will be ongoing but we have made a serious dent in the weed plant problem.

Saturday 18 April – our first planting out day – Please diarise this date. 

As a result, we are now able to go ahead with our first planting day. Please go to your calendars and block out Saturday morning 18 April.

More details will follow but we plan to plant 400 native seedlings on this, the first of probably four planting days this year. Children are most welcome this time and the general public has also been informed via our signboard that they are welcome to come and help us.

Another great benefit of Forest & Bird and HCC working together was that we began to get to know each other and share our passions. We really look forward to seeing this develop as we have many things in common.

A “thank you” to the Haukaretu Stream Restoration Project for sending this article to The Upper Hutt Connection.

07/04/26