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The Cambridge dog park.

There are two parks in Cambridge where dogs can be exercised off lead, one in Leamington and this one on the corner of Thornton Rd and McLean St in Cambridge.We opened October by going to this dog park. It's a low-lying place and water has accumulated at one end of a hollow which was dug as a drain many years ago and has filled up over time. We cleared the plants for spraying and will expand the circles around them with line trimmers. We had another good turnout, so the work was done quickly. It...

Convolvulus

This vine has turned into a vigorous grower in this era of climate change. It's now the most beautiful weed in Cambridge. Here are some more photos....

Jim's Patch.

Today, Tuesday 16th September, we went to the edge of Payne Park where we have a little planting which commemorates Jim McKnight, a long-term member until his death a few years ago.It also does duty as a cover for part of the park that the Council's lawnmower can't reach without serious risk of sliding down the hillside.As usual, we weeded around the plants before spraying. The plants are growing well. The kauri are shooting skyward and the flaxes and other trees and shrubs are filling up the sp...

Jane's Lane Sept. 2025

One of our members, Jane Moodie, had the idea of planting along the fenceline of the Brian Mayo Reserve between the drain and the Rimu Grove. We've spent  some time there weeding around the plants so that they are nor damaged by spraying. Our planting is doing well, but so are the weeds.Last Thursday, 11th September 2025, we finished the job for this cycle, but not without some adventure as things didn't go quite to plan.There had been a lot of rain previously, and although the day was fine...

Here be Tygers!

Tuesday, 26th August, and we finally got to the swale in Brian Mayo Reserve. We cleared vegetation from the bases of the trees so that we could spray, and checked the plastic ties that were supporting the smaller plants that we planted a couple of years ago. Growth has been spectacular, and what was a fairly open space between the expressway and the swale is now a leafy canyon. It appears from the tyre tracks that motorcyclists enjoy weaving in and out among the trees. It's a good obstacle cours...

Finishing the mulching.

The Council had obligingly left a couple of small heaps of mulch for us to spread to finish the job of mulching the new planting beside the drain near the Kahikatea Grove, so we got busy and spread it.We had a small turnout today. The wind was cold and rain was prophesied, so it wasn't likely to be pleasant working. As it happened, the weather was fairly good to us, and we finished the job in about 50 minutes. We just had a couple of gaps to fill and they weren't big ones. We got back to the nur...

Thursday, 14th August 2025.

Before...Spreading mulch at the drain by the Kahikatea Grove. The Council staff kindly left us some more mulch in heaps beside the drain. We spread all of it in an hour and a half. Again, a good turnout.Spring has sprung a month early, and although the wind is cold, the clear sunny days make it good to be outside, and our members are taking advantage of it....

Appleby Shared Path

Thursday, 7th August 2025. We had a good turn-out for a Thursday- 14 people, so for once we could finish all the weeding ready for the spray team to finish off the more open areas away from our plants.This area isn't very big, but it's difficult. There's a lot of road metal around, which makes kneeling uncomfortable, and the weeds are very good at hiding in the plants, especially the carex, which is a grass, not a tree, and therefore doesn't have a nice single stem that we can weed up to.This pa...

The Rimu Grove

 A few years ago, it was a wilderness of vines which climbed over everything in sight. It took us 3 months to clear them away. Now, in August 2025, some of the trees have died of a disease which we think is a version of phytopthora, the pathogen that causes kauri dieback. Scientific analysis showed that it isn't, but couldn't pinpoint an alternative. The trees will be removed, and something may show up then.We have to confirm that, and also see about removing the dead and diseased trees. We...

At the cemetery track 9.9.2025

One of our members visits this track often, and had reported a growing invasion of blackberry and privet. Much of the bush here is old and self-renewing, but birds drop seeds hand the seeds grow, so we need to pay attention and attend to the weeding.It's a very nice place, as many people have found. Someone has installed a rope to swing out over the little stream that flows through it. Someone has built a couple of rough dams to make swimming holes, and BMX people have made an elementary track w...

Before and After. 8 years' growth at the Meadow Walk stage 5.

We planted this area because it was draining the surrounding banks and was therefore pretty wet and not mowable for most of the year. Water, warmth and CO2 have done their work, and the result is a much drier area and an incipient jungle....

Planting the drain at the Kahikatea Grove

Tuesday, June 8th 2025. We're extending the plantings at the grove to cover the drainage ditch there. The Council cleared the gorse and blackberry away, and we have sprayed it. Nevertheless, gorse in particular will be coming up for years. We're largely on top of the blackberry problem, but we still find little shoots coming off the roots that are still alive. The blackberry stand was impressive, and its roots were extensive.We planted about 120 trees of various types and sizes, all native. Nati...

Plastic sheeting!

Tuesday 1st July 2025. Many years ago, this land, which is part of the the Green Belt, was leased for grazing. Supplementary feed was delivered in bales wrapped in plastic. The plastic was cut off and dumped among the trees. Years later, it is still there, still strong, and getting entangled in the tree roots as they grow. It also got in the way of the planting we did to extend the kahikatea grove. We're removing it. The Council has a bin for unrecyclable waste, and we take the plastic and its a...

Kahikatea Grove 1.7.25

Tuesday, 1st July 2025. Today we planted the edge of a drain that the council had cleared of a good many difficult weeds, including a lot of blackberry and gorse. It's been sprayed and the first trees are going in. There are more to come on the other side of the drain and later, there will be infill planting with smaller trees and shrubs. There were a lot of us here today. Usually school holidays result in a shortage as our members go on grandparent duty minding children, but not this time. We g...

The Town of Trees

Hall St. in May. What can be done with street trees. Hall Street's paving isn't very wide, but the verges are and this is the result. It would be nice to think that this view is replicated in other streets, but it's not. Others, such as Shakespeare St., have not had their trees as long as Hall St. and they still have a lot of growing to do....

Trees are not immortal

Depending on the species, trees have a natural lifespan from a few decades to several millennia. Some palms live only 50 years; birches, willows and fruit trees for not much longer. Beeches can live for 300 years, while oaks and pines may last as long as 500 years. The giant sequoia of California can make it to 3000 years, but the longest-lived species of all is the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine which can reach 5000 years.Of course like us humans, not all trees reach the span of their natural lif...

The Loop Track

The idea came from two Cambridge women who made a casual comment to our Chairman, Don Willoughby, that it would be nice to have a loop track around the end of the hill where bluegums had been felled, and leading up to the level ground at the top.This was a lot harder to do than it looked. The higher ground is very steep and needed stairs. Waipa District Council attended to that. Staircases in public areas have to be built to a high standard. Water run-off is a problem too. There is a depression ...

The rain it raineth...

every day, upon the just and unjust fella,and that is why I like to bringmy motorised umbrella. (aka my car)Thursday, June 12th 2025 was wet. It had rained overnight, and rain continued, but some of us turned up at the nursery anyway. After all, socialising is one reson for joining the Tree Trust.After about 15 minutes, the rain stopped, so we started weeding in the nursery. About 20 minutes later, the rain resumed. We gave up, had early morning tea, or perhaps a late breakfast, chatted for a wh...

The Swale and the Truck

Occasionally, things do not go according to plan. It was easy enough to get the truck into the work area, but a bit harder to get it out. The driver veered to avoid a bush, with disastrous consequences on the wet, slippery bank of the swale. Luckily, the Waipa District Council's parks department had a big tractor available. They've bulldozed flatter access now....

Some things we get up to...

It's not all work at the Tree Trust. Here we are, socialising at a mid-winter lunch at Karapiro.We had been treating ourselves twice a year; mid-winter and pre-Christmas, but as the later time has become busier, with more grand-children, many living in different towns and even countries, we have decided to have only the mid-winter event. It provides a welcome break at a time when there's not much on. Once King's Birthday and Matariki are over, there's a long stretch to Labour Day at the end of O...

Planting in the swale

After a very long wait, while the weather decided what it was going to be, we finally got on to planting the Swale in the Brian Mayo Reserve. Previously, the weather had been too dry, then too wet. We've had vehicles stuck in the mud before, and don't want to do it again. The erratic weather held up our work and proved very frustrating. We wanted to get on and finish this job and move to others, but the weather held us up for weeks....

Gabrielle

Cyclone Gabrielle didn't cause much damage in Cambridge compared to the havoc it wreaked elsewhere. Nevertheless, the Council needed help to tidy up windblown branches and trees. We were happy to help out.Some of our work practices don't pass modern rules or attitudes, but we belong to a generation where health and safety were matters for personal control, not legislation. Basically, we use the old sailingship mantra: one hand for the ship and one for yourself....