The Kauri 2000 Trust orders seedlings, prepares site management plans and arranges for sites to be cleared and prepared for planting. Seedlings are raised from eco-sourced seed, our supply grown for us by Habitat Enhancement and Landcare Partnership Waihi Inc. Seedlings must be at least 500 to 600mm tall, healthy and weed free.. Site preparation is carried out by paid contractors and includes spraying for weeds such as blackberry as well as line cutting. Planting takes place in June each year so the trees will establish well before summer, which can be very dry. The planters, all volunteers, are a diverse and enthusiastic bunch – from Brownies, schools and foreign language students, to Lions, garden clubs, families, companies and the general public. Seedlings are planted at approximately four metre spacing with slow release fertiliser and generally with Saturaid, and staked if necessary on more exposed sites.

Monitoring and maintenance

The location of all planting sites and trees is recorded in the Kauri 2000 database. We monitor tree health at each site and have made a public commitment to maintain all planting sites until the trees are established – for some three to five years, or longer if the site requires. It is this commitment to continue maintaining our trees that differentiates us from so many other one-off volunteer planting efforts. We will replant trees in the first year or so if the site is suitable but we do not guarantee to always replace seedlings or tags. The reality is that for the bulk of our plantings, apart from the few in formal park settings, we will need to continue with annual inspections, releasing and in future, light well cutting, for 10 years or so.

In the enthusiasm of our early years volunteers planted around 3000 trees each year – 6500 in one memorable year. We really did have, as Patron Dame Cath Tizard described it, `a tiger by the tail’.

The Trust has made a conscious decision to ease back to planting around 1500 to 2000 annually, so we can focus on maintaining the trees already in the ground.

Even at a reduced planting rate, we will need to care for around 25,000 trees a year potentially for the next five years, dropping to about 17,000 after that. And even assuming that trees may only need releasing every second or third year once established, this has huge implications financially.