News article

Clean Sweep For Wellington Region in NZPCN Awards For 2008

Waitohu Stream care Inc

This group was formed in 1999 to improve the riparian environment of Waitohu Stream. They have built their own nursery and produced 1000’s of native sedlings which have been planted to stabilise the Waitohu Stream and provide habitat for fauna.

Council

Greater Wellington Regional Council

Greater Wellington have been leading a range of programmes throughout the region including habitat protection, community restoration days, coordinating plant groups, undertaking pest control. Their team including Tim Porteous, Philippa Crisp, Robyn Smith and many more are achieving great things for plant conservation in Wellington.

Nursery

Berhampore Nursery - Wellington City Council

Each year Berhampore Nursery Manager Jonathan Bussell and his team produce 100,000 ecosourced plants for use throughout the city in restoration programmes, rehabilitation plantings, streamside and wetland plantings and for schools. There are few parts of the city from its coastal margins to the grey scrublands at the highest points on Mount Kaukau which the Berhampore team have not touched through their growing programmes at the nursery. Jonathan has developed a core suite of ecosourced ‘bombproof’ species as the base for planting programmes. Added to this are site specific species including Metrosideros robusta, in association with Project Crimson, Project Podocarp which targets suitable sites for reintroduction of species for future emergent forest and coastal revegetation programmes using Spinifex sericeus, Desmoshoenus spiralis and Lepedium oleraceum. The nursery team is an invaluable resource for the city and supporting the community at large.

School

Kelburn School Gully Project

Over the past decade the kelburn school community has returned a large blackberry infested gully to its native state. The species are based on Wellington Bot gardens bush remnant species list. Plants have been eco sourced in conjunction with Otari and WCC. Of particular importance are the 3 black maire gifted by the botanical society in recognition of our commitments to restoring the gully. This in earlier times was ecologically contiguous with the botanic gardens.

Individual

Arnold Dench

In the 1950s, Arnold, with his wife, Ruth, began converting a steep, wind-swept paddock in Newlands, Wellington, into a native plant garden of national importance. Since then, they have specialised in our alpine flora, e.g. Celmisia, Myosotis, Wahlenbergia, Ourisia, Ranunculus, ground covers, grasses and grass-like plants, learning, by trial and error, how to germinate the seeds, grow on the seedlings, and raise them to adulthood. Arnold has provided threatened plant material to Percy Scenic Reserve and Otari-Wilton’s Bush, Wellington, and at other times, accepted seed and specimens from these reserves, and from botanists around NZ, for growing on, and return. Arnold and Ruth have always been ready to pass on what they have learnt about the cultivation and horticultural use of our native plants, and as keen to learn from others. Arnold’s knowledge of our alpine flora, his readiness to share that knowledge, his exchanges of plant material, and his presentations on alpine plants, have made an outstanding contribution to the profile of our threatened native plants.

Life time achievement

Barbara Mitcalfe and Chris Horne

These are two of the most passionate plant people in Wellington. Stalwarts of the Wellington Botanical Society and highly regarded as botanists and wise minds in the plant conservation world. They are truly amazing inspirational people and have assisted with hundreds of plant surveys and planting projects and guided botanical walks and Bot Soc trips.

Posted: 12/08/2008