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Local natives and weeds

First day beating the feet during the rahui to save lives and eliminate Covid-19.
I explored part of Sinclair Park, discovering natives and exotic weeds mixed together. And a lovely wildness in the margins.

Some of the natives
Hover over the photo for more information.

Puriri aka Vitex lucens. The berries are important bird food

Mahoe aka whiteywood aka Melicytus ramiflorus

Some of the pest plants I spotted are below.

Sycamore aka Acer pseudoplatanus Remember those helicopters as a kid?, Well they help disperse the seeds over large areas.

Life in the margins

Fennel has been left to grow in the margins which is great to attract beneficial insects and pollinators. The seeds are delicious too

There's a variety of native trees and shrubs along the path. The edges are left to go wild creating an ecosystem of their own.

A wider view, showing a combination of mowed and wildness.

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Restoring the balance

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This Southgate property has a large bush area where weeds had taken over and karaka had become the dominant species, considerably reducing diversity. Although karaka is a NZ native, it isn't native to Wellington and takes over from our local plants. Te Motu Kairangi explains more.
We are gradually managing the herbaceous weeds. With the karaka, we are hand pulling the seedlings and chopping down larger plants then Stump Stopping the cut. This seems to be working though karaka does re-sprout from below the cut, so we have to be more persistent than the karaka.
We're careful not to take out too many larger trees at once as the area is on a bank and we don't want to disturb the terrain more than necessary.

Assessing the bush area Aug 2018
Hover over the images to learn about our first visit to this bush area.

Taller mahoe is a great pioneer plant. Loads of karaka seedlings in front

Bold karaka make their way through the tradescantia

Looking down to a large flat area in the bush

Happy to spot a few self-seeded kohekohe plants

We discovered a few other plants such as this japonica, hydrangeas, feijoas and camellia.

Starting work

First task was to dig some rough steps for safe access and to start dealing to the weeds (tradescantia, convolvulus, galinsoga, bay tree, with old man's beard and German ivy on the fringes).

Rough steps from the property to the bush area

Same steps, but looking up to the house area

A group of native self-seeded plants, mainly ngaio and mahoe

Mahoe (Melicytus ramiflorus, whitey wood) in front. Karaka ( (Corynocarpus laevigatus, New Zealand laurel) at the back.

Some creature finds the mahoe leaf tasty

Great to see some self-seeded ngaio (Myoporum laetum)

More of the good fellas, ngaio and coprosma repens

And as we clear we discover more self-seeded kawakawa(Macropiper excelsum).

The flat area with the start of our pile of felled karaka

Continuing our mahi
October/November/December 2018. Hover for explanations

Felled karaka trees. We lay them horizontally between trees. This is to help keep water on the property and gradually form a shelf, rather than have water and soil run straight down the hill off the property.

Here's a sawn then Stump Stopped karaka. We leave some of the stumps quite high to put the horizontal branches behind and to hang on to when clambering around the slope.

Steps from next door property. They're random lumps of concrete and we had to move some of them as unstable

Great crop of galinsoga and convolvulus.

Lovely to discover three or four kohekohe on the property.

Gregor in his element, sawing bossy karaka

Summer 2019
Already we've noticed more birds (types and numbers), seen dragonflies and more native seedlings popping up.
Now we've made space, let the light in, and it's planting time, we're hoping to plant some Wellington natives, ideally those that are getting rare in the wild. This will add to the wider ecosystem and increase diversity in this little piece of bush.

Making access across the bank having sprayed the galinsoga and tradescantia

Karaka berries plant themselves with damp fleshy fertiliser, giving them a great start in life.

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Garden blog

Local natives and weeds

Restoring the balance

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