A'Deanes Bush Community Planting & Maintenance Day

Celebrate Conservation Week 2024 and "Take Action for Nature" by planting native plants and carrying out maintenance around previous plantings at the A'Deanes Bush Scenic Reserve Community Planting & Maintenance Day, Makaretu Road, Central Hawke’s Bay with the Friends of A'Deanes Bush, the Conservation Company and the Department of Conservation. Planting this year is in areas that have previously been cleared of blackberry.

Everyone is invited - this event is suitable for families. Nau mai, haere mai, all welcome - we would love your help!

Planting starts at 10 am and will finish at 1 pm. On completion of the planting enjoy an easy stroll through A’Deane’s Bush, see the work being done by the Friends of A’Deanes Bush to preserve this precious bush and see the one of New Zealand’s largest standing totara, approximately 34m high and estimated to be over 600 years of age.

What to bring: Spade, hat, suitable wet weather gear if required, drink. The area can be wet so gumboots and gardening gloves are recommended.

A'Deanes Bush is located off Makaretu Road, (1km past Sherwood School), which is off SH 50, south of Ongaonga.

Friends of A’Deanes Bush - A’Deane’s Bush Scenic Reserve is a 38 ha lowland forest and includes one of the few native forest remnants in the Ashley Clinton district. It is managed as a joint venture between Friends of A’Deane’s Bush and DOC.

This awesome little reserve features one of New Zealand’s largest standing totara, along with rimu, matai, titoki, black beech and kahikatea. It is also home to a range of native birds and the threatened long-tailed bat and green mistletoe.

The Friends of A’Deane’s Bush is a great eco-restoration project involving many partners and has been working to try and achieve their vision of creating a wildlife sanctuary where native plants and animals flourish, and where local community and visitors are encouraged to experience and learn about the ecological restoration of New Zealand’s natural heritage.

Predator control, weed management, along with kereru, tui, morepork and long-tailed bat counts, weta houses, lizard retreats, and invertebrate monitoring are all being utilised to help understand the bush area and to monitor the response of wildlife to the pest control efforts.

Ongoing planting of appropriate native species is occurring to re-vegetate margins of bush and wetlands of the reserve. Forest birds such as miromiro/tomtit and tititipounamu/rifleman have been re-introduced back into the reserve with more translocations to come in the future.

For more information go to the Friends of A’Deane's Bush Facebook page www.facebook.com/adeanesbush/

This event is part of Conservation Week 2024 - www.doc.govt.nz/conservationweek