Greening Taupō Day 2022
Thank you Joel from Corbie Films for this awesome video!
On June 3rd we held our annual 'Greening Taupo Day'. All of the work that we do in the community and with schools is provided free of charge, so this was a chance for people to give back. In the week leading up to this day, local businesses had green window displays and fundraised, with Town Centre Taupō offering prizes.
Over 30 local schools and ECE centres participated in some way. It is really cool to see our community come together to support a local community group. However, it's even more special to see everyone helping to improve our local environment while educating our tamariki about the importance of restoring our native bush to bring back our native wildlife. Many schools held 'dress in green days', fundraised, and carried out conservation activities as part of a schools competition. Contact Energy awarded a prize of a $1000 restoration planting, which went to Waipahihi Primary School. Mitre 10 gave a further $700 worth of prizes, which were shared between Taupō Educational Preschool, Taupō Kids Community and Taupō Children’s Corner. Huka Honey Hive ran an art competition for all local school children, collecting thousands of entries.
Click here to see what schools and kindergartens did to celebrate the day.
The main event took place at Crown Park, where 4500 native trees were planted by over 1500 people! The mayor opened the day and planted the first tree. The event has become a festival of environmental education, with free food, music, and many local experts onsite with free activities for the kids. Ruud Kleinpaste (The Bug Man) ran a bug hunting activity with Waipahihi School student leaders. Forest and Bird, DOC, Taupō District Council, Waikato Regional Council, Enviroschools, Tongariro Trout Centre, Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, Wingspan Birds of Prey, Huka Honey Hive, Mynoke, Epro, Civil Defence, Taupō Disc Golf, Kids Bike Taupō and many more organisations were there to entertain and educate. Big thanks goes out to the many sponsors, including, Trev Terry Marine who cooked 1000 free sausages, The Bistro for providing free hot soup, Pak n Save for the buns and condiments, and DJ Alexi for the awesome music. Korio and Mediaworks advertised the event. Holes dug by Taupō District Council were filled with Mynoke vermicast to fertilise the trees, which were paid for by Trees that Count. It was amazing to see the support that the whole community had for this day.
Scroll down to see our gallery of photos of the day.
What next?
In 2023 Greening Taupō Day was again held at this site. Another 3500 trees were planted! This site is special because it borders a an area that is home to endangered geothermal plant species. It is also a restoration site that has expanded on previous Kids Greening Taupō plantings done in the gully by Lake Taupō Christian School and Tauhara Primary School. Tauhara College also has restoration plantings nearby in Plantation Reserve and Taupō Educational Preschool also utilise the site for learning through nature. . All of these schools are now able to adopt this planting and become kaitiaki of it. KGT will work with them to help maintain the site by weeding it, mulching it, doing infill planting, doing predator control, and cleaning up rubbish at the site. It will become another project that is used as an authentic learning context by many surrounding schools and kindergartens.
