Our Projects

We supported the Tauhara Collective to put on ‘Matariki ki te Maunga’, a two day planting event which was the first step in restoring the native korowai of Tauhara Maunga through their project, Tauhara Kitea. The community came out in force, including 650 students from local schools, and joined us over two days to plant 7500 plants. St Patrick’s School planted their Trees for Survival plants that they had been growing for a year in their shade house.

Greening Taupō Day 2024 kicked off the planting at this site on the edge of the Taupō Golf Course. 3500 trees were planted at an environmental education festival by 2000 people. There was food, music, and lots of stands with activities for the tamariki.

Tongariro School began working with KGT in 2024. Waikato Regional Council funding has allowed us to have a coordinator working in Tūrangi and we were vey excited to help the school plant a native garden for Matariki.

We worked with Miraka and Tūaropaki native plant nursery to plant a stream area in Mokai with tamariki from Whakamaru and Tirohanga schools. After learning about the importance of wetlands and riparian planting, the students planted 1500 native plants.

In 2023, school science teacher Marni Lynn, saw an advertisement for a Butterfly and Moth Habitat Award and thought this could be a great opportunity to extend the learning of the prior years even further.

This site on Crown Road was planted during the Greening Taupō Day celebrations in 2022 and 2023. Over 7000 plants went in during the festivities, but so much more was happening at schools and ECE centres in town too!

Kids Greening Taupō worked with Bluelight Taupō and all year 7 students from Taupō Intermediate to clear a jungle of jasmine and ivy, freeing the 50 year old native trees in their overgrown gully. Now they are working with a local landscape architect and an engineering firm to develop an outdoor classroom in the space.

The rangers from St Patrick’s Catholic School and the tamariki at Northwood Kindergarten have taken on restoring this local gully with TDC. They have planted over 1500 trees in 3 years of planting, and have set up a trapline.

Kids Greening Taupō (KGT) worked with Wairakei Primary School in 2021 to turn their school gully from an overgrown, unusable area into an amazing outdoor learning space. They did weeding and planting, and have also set a trapline that they check every school day.

As part of a local subdivision development project above Waipahihi Gully, the developers have put a large sum of money into restoring and conserving native habitat in the local gully. They consulted the local school kids about how to do this and involved them in the work!

One of KGT’s pilot projects, He Manu Whenua was started in 2015 and is still being added to today.

This reserve has gone from a grassy area to a ngahere for the kindergarten, community and native birds to enjoy.

Taupō Primary School have been restoring the Community Park with the support of Taupō District Council.

Students have been undertaking Biodiversity surveys a couple of times each year to see what species of mammalian pests, plants, birds and bugs they have at their centre.

In 2019 Taupō Nui-a-Tia College created a new class subject for project-based Science. In early 2021, teacher Julieann Hulena joined forces with Kids Greening Taupō Education Coordinator- Sian to restart work with Taupō Nui-a-Tia at Motutāhae.

The planting site at Spa Park has been a student leadership annual planting since 2017. The student leaders also created a Kiwi Guardian adventure map for the area and made a rotting pile of logs into an official bug hotel. Now they’ve added a trapline too!

Through a collaborative project with KGT and NZ forest managers, Lake Taupō Christian School collected native seedlings from in the pine forest, potted them up, and then planted them into their restoration project in the Crown Park Gully.

We had lots of fun helping out Whaea Jess and Room 1 at Mountview Primary School with their garden project. They were the lucky recipients of funding from our Contact Energy Take Action Fund earlier in the year. Due to lockdown stopping everything in Term 3, they now had a short time to get the garden project underway. We were excited to come in and help.

Hilltop school student leaders, Lizzie and Pipi, led a class project to create a bug garden and pollinator paradise for our native pollinators. They had advice from Ruud Kleinpaste, ‘The Bug Man’ and they even transplanted stick insects! Read about the new, ‘Hilltop Haven’ here.

Children’s Corner have transformed a neglected strip of land behind their building into their own “Sanctuary”.

Waipāhīhī Kindergarten tamariki transformed a thin strip of garden full of pebbles and made it a native garden space.

Tauhara Primary School started an onsite restoration area beside their bike track and also made a Mokomoko Motorcamp, a habitat for lizards.

KGT Student Leader, Emily, led a lizard habitat project at Taupō Primary School. After planting lizard friendly plants, a sign was designed and installed by the students.

St Patrick’s School Taupō and Maeroa Intermediate in Hamilton worked with KGT, Waikato Regional Council and Enviroschools to introduce a biological control beetle to Taupō!

A collaborative effort to restore the river banks has led to an awesome annual Matariki Planting Event. This site has now been adopted by many neighbouring schools and ECE centres for learning.

Northwood Kindergarten have taken on the Brentwood Gully as a restoration project and space to explore and connect to nature.

Broadlands School used Contact Energy Take Action Funding to plant a native pathway and learn about our unique native plant species.

In 2021 the pine forest in Wairakei Village was felled and the hills across the road from the school became bare. We asked whether the land could be planted into native forest and if so, whether the local school children could be involved. It was very exciting to find out that the answer was YES!

The onset of winter and all the news of sickness enticed the students of St. Patrick’s School to investigate natural remedies that could be found in nature. In class, they started to research the different plants that the local Māori would use in rongoā Māori or the use of plants as medicine. To further their learning Kids Greening Taupō leaders took them to the Brentwood Gully to have real hands-on experience with the local rongoā plants growing around them.

In 2024 Hilltop School won the Contact Energy $1000 restoration prize from Greening Taupō Day. We wored with the junior classes and helped them to plant a large bank by the junior playground, adding 130 plants to the space that had been cleared of weeds.

Taupo Children's Corner invited their tamariki to come along with their whānau and create native gardens around their new outdoor area. 60 native plants were put in the ground to help improve the biodiversity at the centre.

In 2019 students from Tauhara College worked with KGT to create a vision plan for the Miro Street Plantation Reserve. With TDC support, this area continues to be planted by students from the school each year.

We worked with Taupō District Council and tamariki from Te Kura O Hirangi and Tongariro School to put almost 150 native plants in the ground and do some weeding in the Wiremū St Reserve, Tūrangi.

Northwood Kindergarten have weeded and planted their back garden in native plants. They also made a bug hotel and made a sign to put beside itf.