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Whangārei

TfS are excited to see their Northland cluster of schools grow with Kamo Intermediate, Portland School and Maunu School experiencing their first TfS planting days this season and Whau Valley school  with their new shadehouse ready to receive their first delivery of seedlings in September.  With 5 schools in Whangārei, TfS have established a dedicated local Facilitator to oversee the programme in this area.  Kate Davies will support the smooth running of the programme,  organ...

Matariki 2024

Following a successful Matariki event in 2023,  on 28th June Trees for Survival in partnership with Gallagher Insurance and Raapua Collective and other partners, hosted a Matariki celebration for the community at  Maungatautari.   It was a stunning morning for a dawn ceremony at Karapiro where local tamariki took to the awa, carrying a flame which then lit fires that offered food to the stars.  The group acknowledged those that had passed and embraced the energy of the d...

Āwhitu Planting

Trees for Survival love to celebrate the inspiring stories of many of their landowners. The Harris family recently hosted the Āwhitu School, Waiuku School and Sandspit Road School planting days and have hosted TfS planting in previous years.  Their Waiuku property lies at the confluence of two streams flowing into the Manukau harbour and as part of the Āwhitu Peninsula Landscape group they are also planting thousands of native plants at their property this season contributing to the nativ...

Facilitator resources

To help enable the smooth running of planting days, our facilitators are well resourced with a myriad of items.  From meeting and greeting landowners, partners and schools groups, giving health and safety briefings and demonstrating to the group how to plant; our facilitators have the knowledge and resources to get planting day underway. Facilitators each provide spades for the schools use, together with a Makita battery operated auger to help dig holes if the conditions are right,  bu...

Big Picture Planting

We know that an individual can make a difference -  individual trees can provide shade and habitat, an individual can plant hundreds of trees, and a school thousands of trees over many years.  What Trees for Survival is increasingly enjoying is seeing how groups of landowners are supporting several schools to plant, not a single site but several sites, protecting and enhancing kilometres of watercourse and creating ecological corridors on neighbouring land. In the Muriwai Valley in Auc...

Native Tree donation appeal starting 27 May

Trees for Survival Charitable Trust is calling on New Zealanders to play their part in helping to ‘reforest Aotearoa’ by donating a native tree to their nationwide school programme.The charity’s inaugural ‘Donate a Native Tree’ appeal kicks off on 27 May and will run until 31 May 2024, aiming to raise as much as possible to help them bring the programme to the schools on their waiting list.National Manager Phil Lyons said people can decide to donate a tree for $7, give a monetary donat...

#1 Planter

Since our partnership with Trees that Count began in 2022, Trees for Survival has become their #1 all time planter.Our school programme has planted 75,000 native plants with Trees that Count over the past three years - and counting! Our environmental education programme is supporting schools and communities to restore our environment....

2 million trees and counting

New Zealand charity, Trees for Survival Charitable Trust, has been quietly achieving – and surpassing – a phenomenal milestone: more than two million native plants grown and planted by New Zealand school students.Our Rotarian initiated charity, Trees for Survival first began in 1991 with a shade house and a plan to inspire New Zealand students how to grow and nurture NZ native seedlings and planting them in erosion-prone and at-risk land across Aotearoa, New Zealand.What began with three sch...

Native Plant Seeds

With 230 schools set to be growing and planting with TfS in 2025, we are busy preparing for the large amount of native plant seed that needs to be collected now before being germinated at Nga Rakau and Te Whangai nurseries.   Plant seed differs hugely in size and weight with only 0.4 grams of seed needed to sow a tray of 200 Hebe compared to the 12 grams of seed need to sow a tray of  Harakeke/Flax (below). As TfS schools grow and plant on a yearly cycle, in 2024 the nurseries hav...

Before and After

Before and After……nothing shows the impact of planting and how quickly the landscape can be revegetated and restored than a good before and after photo. Trees for Survival facilitators will spend the next few months visiting planting sites from the previous two years to monitor plant growth. Seeing 2 years growth on these native plants is incredibly rewarding for landowners and the schools that grew and planted them.  This is work to be proud of!...

Watch them grow

Trees for Survival encourages their schools to transplant their seedings as soon as possible after delivery in September to ensure they have the best chance to grow over the warm summer months. Plants are placed in the custom built, irrigated shade houses and are watered twice a day. With the fantastic weather we’ve experienced – TfS facilitators checking on plants are now having to trim some plants that are already at the top of the shade house! This is fantastic for students to monitor &nb...

24 Years of Planting

After 24 years as a Trees for Survival Facilitator – Gail Allende has reluctantly said farewell. Gail has kindly shared some of her stories and recollected how things have changed in TfS over the years:‘Way back at the beginning of 2000 having just completed a diploma in landscape design, a friend suggested I call the team leader for Auckland’s Trees for Survival programme. It all sounded like my kind of thing so I joined up with this small team of people attached to Auckland Council but w...

Outstanding Results

Hearing from landowners who want to share the success of a schools planting is one way Trees for Survival measure and share their success.  Given the best chance at survival through good site preparation, fair weather and weed clearance – the native plants that TfS schools plant have every chance of thriving and successfully establishing areas of native revegetation.  Photos from a site in south Auckland and the message from the landowner say it all…..’they grew good plants and t...

Good things take time!

We are all aware of the long term benefits of planting native plants such as the creation of ecological corridors and filtering of nutrients into waterways, so it was pretty special that at this year’s planting day, Ararimu school students had kowhai and totara trees to plant amongst the other native plants they’d nurtured at the school.  The Kowhai and Totara had been grown from seed by one of the students grandmothers whose nearby property was the site of Trees for Survival planting 2...

Give the gift of trees this Christmas

Trees for Survival national manager Phil Lyons is encouraging people to give a donation this Christmas to help their environmental education programme expand to more schools across Aotearoa New Zealand. Phil said it was wonderful to see more people choosing to give the gift of a tree or a charitable donation for birthdays, anniversaries, or Christmas in lieu of a more traditional gift.“A donation is an ideal gift for those people who seem to have everything, and a great way to show support for...

Welcome Taranaki!

Five schools in the Taranaki region were welcomed to the Trees for Survival programme in 2022 and have now completed their first cycle of growing on seedlings and  planting these out.  What a great achievement.  This year a further 6 schools have joined TfS and have been set up with their shade houses. All 11 schools will receive their seedlings in October ready for potting up. TfS have also welcomed a second TfS Facilitator to help run the growing number of Taranaki region school...

Spring is sprung

Spring is sprung..... so it must be seedling time! With planting days nearly completed for the season, potting up season is suddenly here.  A huge amount of planning  is involved to enable the dispersal of 17,360 litres of potting mix and 212,000 seedlings to 217 schools. TfS work closely with Te Whangai and Nga Rakau Nurseries for the germination of much of our eco sourced seed.  Working with nature there are always elements of the unknown to contend with, so species and plant nu...

Watering Tech

Every new school to the Trees for Survival programme is set up with a plant growing unit (PGU) that we refer to as the shade house. This is where the growing takes place for all the seedlings. Once potted up from their seedling trays to larger planting bags, the timers are set for watering and schools monitor plant growth until next planting season.  The TfS shade houses were designed by Rotary in 1991 and have undergone only minor changes since. One thing that has changed is the introducti...

Milestones!

The 2023 Trees for Survival planting season has seen some wonderful milestones reached which we know will inspire our partners. We have acknowledged teachers who helped run the programme in schools for 20 years,  schools who have been planting for 20+ years and we know we have Partners who have supported our schools for many years! What great commitment to revegetation, education and environmental restoration!...

Bringing back birdsong

As plants grow and mature, many of the Trees for Survival planting sites will contribute to becoming ‘stepping stones’ or ‘ecological corridors’ linking and joining areas of existing native bush.  These stopping places and linkages are vital to help birds and insects travel between larger areas of habitat and food source. With ongoing support from partners we know that every little bit helps and our actions have a positive effect....

August Planting

August Planting…….. August has been a busy month for Trees for Survival Schools with lots of schools getting out and enjoying their planting days.  During August our schools have planted 36,816 native plants! Our planting days are a chance for our Partners to get out of the office and roll up their sleeves to engage with the schools they support, together with landowners and teachers. What a great way to contribute to your environment and community!(photo by chalkphotography.co.nz)...

Coromandel Peninsula

Five Coromandel Peninsula schools were welcomed to the Trees for Survival programme in 2022.  With lots of support from landowners, teachers and corporate partners, these 5 schools have completed their first season of potting up,  growing and most recently planting their year old native plants on sites ranging from riverside to steep hillside!  All of these plants will contribute to revegetation of native forest on the peninsula. Awesome work!...

We love planting waterways

Water has featured prominently in our news this year with some dramatic rain fall events around the country. Many Trees for Survival schools plant around riparian margins and overland flow paths where the native plants that the school has grown do an amazing job of shading and cooling water, filtering, slowing water flow, securing land and providing habitat and food for native wildlife. Trees for Survival partners support this fantastic initiative -  helping support important riparian reveg...

Matariki... In the Waikato

Trees for Survival were proud to join with Principal Partner Crombie Lockwood to support representatives from Ngāti Koriki Kahukura who hosted a morning celebration to acknowledge Matariki.  On the slopes of Maungatautari (Sanctuary Mountain) it was a wonderful opportunity to share and learn about the cultural significance of the Matariki star cluster and  the ties these have to our natural environment. The group shared karakia (prayer), kai (food), games, songs and finished the morni...

Fonterra joins Trees for Survival

We're happy to welcome Fonterra as a principal partner. Together we're able to support 21 schools and deliver our environmental educational programme. Fonterra’s Hapori programme has 10 committees across New Zealand offering support to regional projects so that we can make a collective impact.We look forward to sharing planting day stories with you soon.#fonterranz...