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Writer's pictureTe Hōnonga a Iwi

September 2024 project update




September is usually our busiest month at Te Hononga a Iwi. This year was no exception. It has been full on and demanded significant care and attention from many stakeholders.


It has been pleasing to witness the 20-week effort to transform the 2024 regeneration site from a pest plant and vine-infested, wattle and privet heavy space to a native-dominant grove peppered with ponga and ti kouka.


Our partner organisations, and their fantastic people, have removed tonnes of pest plants, dragging the biomass up a steep hill to mulch and compost for use in 2025.


Other stakeholders have successfully planted 1500 natives supplied by Paremoremo Prison and Trees that Count. Amongst those natives are the first batch of 350 perfect, petit harakeke grown locally by our seed whakapapa partners. What a moment to see Year 8 students and teachers from Kristin School plant what our Rangitoto College youth leader Olivia and plant specialist Nicholas Mayne had grown from local seed 18 months earlier.


The process of growing our own natural capital with support from Settlers Lifestyle Village is a hopeful reminder of what actions can be taken to mitigate climate change, increase biodiversity and regenerate our places. Developing our own pipeline of locally sourced natives will also promote climate resilience and help to ensure a greater percentage of plants survive local shifts in environmental conditions.


Listening to the wisdom of our kaumatua, youth, ecology experts and older adults contributes to our success. Finishing the 2024 planting season with the same school who began our season was special. We have planted 1750 new natives across the restoration this year, bringing our native planting to 8000 across the restoration since we started in 2022. A notable accomplishment.


We hope local people feel their hard mahi has been rewarding. As we write our report, we celebrate promoting mental wellbeing and health in Aotearoa. Investing in nature in itself contributes to individuals’ wellbeing. On scale, the legacy stakeholders are creating will contribute to environmental and community health in the future. Thank you.


Other actions or outcomes achieved across September include:

-          Over 300 Te Hononga a Iwi volunteers, supported by 5 new business partners,  spent 461 hours planting natives, 63 hours trapping across the basin, 478 hours managing plant pests, weeding and clearing the land, securing more than 5 tonnes biomass to mulch for composting in the reactors, building a chicken shed, installing the chicken coop, transplanting 300 leftover natives into new compost and larger pots ready for 2025, setting up the irrigation system for the restoration reactors, building 9 new reactors to harvest biomass from North Harbour Hockey to generate twice the amount of compost, undertaking water quality testing, trapping, plant pest management, education, networking, teaching, presenting, creating stories through outstanding journalism and graphic design, promoting advocacy for environmental health and applying for consent and funding opportunities to grow. This resulted in 1258 volunteer hours, with no paid hours of work. If we reflect our human capital value as the living wage, we have leveraged $31,450 human capital value in September. This value does not include the value in natural capital we have been gifted by the prison and Trees That Count ($17 500), nor does it capture value of partners offering in kind intellectual and manufactured capital value. Congratulations team. An outstanding effort from everyone. And an outcome you can be pleased with. Often SMEs feel they cannot invest in climate-based solutions. This project has raised awareness that all organisations can play to their strengths and contribute towards sustainable development without onerous impact on their bottom line. Please let us know if you would like to become a partner in Te Hononga a Iwi, or any nature-based solution to mitigate climate change. We can help identify your organisation’s strengths and offer insight into how you can invest value into restoration projects.

-          With support from UWEN and Volunteering Auckland, we welcomed 3 new business investors, Megatel, Serko, and Avient to Te Hononga a Iwi and thank them for their massive contribution towards September’s big outcomes. Tasks at a regenerative restoration that uses sustainability as its model might be is different to what volunteers expect. All the volunteers were invested, worked hard, undertook any task we asked for help to achieve. These companies nailed out positive change, delivering notable impact. Thank you all.

-          In particular, we acknowledge the 40 Avient volunteers who worked in pouring rain for hours without complaint. They informed us it was the best volunteering session they’d ever had! Good grief! What stars!

-          We always celebrate people and businesses who combine evidenced-based best practice, with innovation, creativity and courage to drive climate-based solutions to decarbonise, regenerate the environment, increase social equity and promote small business resilience. All the organisations we partner with are investing in the type of change and leadership we need to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Iwi, the community and businesses appreciate working in this space to realise their vision for a better future, be future focused, trial proof of concept. Measure and report outcomes. Offer data to enable understanding of what can be improved. And move forward using diverse skills, knowledge, design, problem-solving. Belonging to a forward-thinking network, who are willing to take responsibility and calculated risks, appears to attract other talent, which we all seem to appreciate. Having iwi and Auckland Council support to pilot ideas has enabled change-iterative development, and positive impact to occur at landscape scale. The ability to innovate at pace and scale is crucial to developing trans-sectoral unity and capacity to decarbonise and restore the health of local ecosystems our communities and nature depend on for their own wellbeing. 

-          We have been doing background preparation with Blue Nature on another innovative piece. Blue Nature actively support youth to increase their understanding of how technology can drive innovative environmental change. We are in discussions about how Te Hononga a Iwi can support student learning by enabling Blue Nature to showcase the use of drone planting in the urban environment to students at Albany Senior High School. We hope to welcome planting drones to our place so students can examine how drones carrying kahikatea seeds can produce greater canopy cover in the urban environment. As an aside, Te Hononga a Iwi has asked if drones with lasers could be used at our place to support pest plant management. We will update the team when there is clarity about this project progressing.

-          Another example of innovative solutions to mitigate climate change has been realised this month with the construction of 9 more bioreactors at North Harbour Hockey. NHHA is gearing up to divert 55 per cent of its current waste to fill (biomass) to onsite composting that can be sold to reduce player costs with surplus compost being invested back into the land to increase soil quality at Te Hononga a Iwi new community food garden.

-          Perhaps the most exciting innovation this month is the decision to progress designing, constructing and installing the accessible community food garden using vertical urban design techniques and employing Te Hononga a Iwi regenerative agricultural and sustainability practices. Bupa funds a nationwide Junior Landcare programme enabling youth to actively contribute to promoting youth mental health by enabling youth to invest in positive environmental solutions. We are privileged to receive Bupa Junior Landcare funding and support from NZ Landcare Trust to enable Te Hononga a Iwi to develop an intergenerational, accessible vertical free urban food garden. The garden design features vertical walls using Corten steel that will hang off a fence line. These vertical structures enable volunteers to stand rather than bend or kneel and grow herbs and leafy greens like kale and spinach. Recycled rebar walls will support passionfruit, tomato and bean vines. The fence line will also enable espaliered fruit trees to grow vertically, greening the environment, offering local high quality food, increasing community resilience and showcasing how we can cool the industrial environment, sequester carbon and offer high quality fruit and vegetables. The garden will have 4 raised bed tables that enable people in wheelchairs and people managing pain or balance challenges, to sit together at 4 tables designed for full access. Designing-in increased accessibility and inclusion enables Te Hononga a Iwi opportunity to generate more diverse problem-solving capability, an outcome that is essential to solve to complex systemic socio-ecological issues relating to the greatest existential crisis humankind and the planet has faced in modern history, climate change. A specially designed children’s raised bed has seating on the long side and is no wider than a child’s arm’s length. The decision to construct a bed that makes it easy for young people to volunteer is purposeful and promotes inclusion and diversity. The adult raised bed is set to hip height, significantly higher than a normal bed, to make it easier for our people to work together across generations. We need urgent support to raise funds for a wheelchair friendly glasshouse and shed. The specifications ensure ample turning spaces for wheelchair users so all aspects of the community food garden are accessible. Please consider donating towards this special part of Te Hononga a Iwi.

-          The 12th wild cat was caught in the live trap and assessed for his health and domesticity at the vet within 2 hours of capture.

-          Speedy Signs has kindly printed a second 3D model banner that enables us to teach and present more effectively. Thank you so much Speedy Signs for your investment in the restoration- we appreciate your support!

-          This month we visited Grow Forrest Hill - an epic community garden provider and learned a lot about its features and impacts. We also met with Pupuke Birdsong coordinator and maximised our time to together learning how we can improve and reduce barriers to success. Thank you both for your time and for readily sharing your knowledge.

-          North Harbour Hockey Association is presenting a Wayfinding and Travel Lightly deputation to the Upper Harbour Local Board this month. As part of North Harbour Hockey Association’s sustainable development programme, it is developing a community hub that will enable local people the opportunity to freely walk or bike around the unused perimeter of the National Hockey Centre ground(1.5km circuit). The circuit is well lit 7 days a week, and has easy access to facilities including toilets and water. The community will have access to free recycled bikes. The Hikoi for Health focuses on promoting further reducing our carbon footprints by using sustainable travel options. The Hikoi for Health will connect the community to numerous local bike and walking paths, encouraging people to connect with nature when daylight hours allow and explore the Community Garden, Te Hononga a Iwi, Rosedale Park, Unsworth Reserve, Burnside Reserve and Fernhill Escarpment. The Hikoi will extend to 6.5 km circuit if people elect to go beyond Hockey’s perimeter. Funding applications have been lodged for 8 more bioreactors to convert waste to compost for the community garden and for assets in the community garden.

-          Te Hononga a Iwi supported local plant nursery A Rocha to transplant natives and learn how to transplant effectively. Local plant specialist Nicholas Mayne led the session. Nicholas is working with UWEN to develop a restoration coordinators course to support building succession planning in our rohe. Thanks so much Nicholas for all you do for our community.

-          Continuing education was a big focus this month, In addition to Nicholas’s nursery workshop, representatives attended the Auckland Council Inspiring Communities Workshop. Ashley Han, our Chinese specialist, was one of the attendees. We increased our understanding of the needs and expectations of the Chinese community and will develop programmes that suit this important part of our local community. Thank you, Ashley and Sinead Brimacombe, for making the workshop such a success.

-          The coordinator attended the Climate and Business Conference and made a number of important contacts.

-          Te Hononga a Iwi has been approached to present a case study for supporting local SMEs to take sustainable development actions to ensure future organisational resilience, working with Tataki Auckland Unlimited to film a segment on how we have made changes that enable SMEs to decarbonise and sequester carbon.

-           Te Hononga a Iwi was delighted to present our model and how we compost to members at Albany Kindergarten. Learning how to present to a wide age range will help us to share our learnings and support growth in nature-based solutions.

-          The Albany Basin traplines are now operating, led by UWEN’s Louis Foot and supported by Te Hononga a Iwi stakeholders Rangitoto College, Kristin School, Gurit, Quinovic and Forbes Packaging. We have other traplines set to go for individuals, groups, or businesses to take a leadership role with local pest control. Please connect with Nicky on hello@restoringrosedalepark.org.nz   if you are keen to help! All you need is gloves, a smart phone, 90 mins per week, and peanut butter, or apricots, cinnamon and icing sugar, flour. The rest is supplied by UWEN and Auckland Council.

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