Stream-side planting at Grovetown School
Hard-working students, teachers and whānau at Grovetown School came together on the last day of Term 2 to plant nearly 600 native shrubs and trees alongside the school creek.
Most of the plants were donated by Champion Freight, and some were grown at school.
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- Seedlings ready to plant
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- Students working hard
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- Newly-planted creek banks
The planting project followed a ‘School Creek Day’, when the whole school spent time learning about the creek, and thinking about questions like:
- ‘Where does the water in our creek come from?’
- ‘What would we have seen here if we stood here 400 years ago?’
- ‘How healthy is the land beside the creek?’
- ‘Where does the creek flow to’, and
- ‘What creatures live in and around our creek?’
Once they get established, the plants beside the stream will make a real difference for the eels and other fish living there, as they will provide shade, insects to eat and habitat amongst the roots in the creek banks. Next, the students are going to learn more about eels, and they want to try to ‘tame’ the eels in their school creek by feeding them from their bridge!
This project ties in with the school’s ongoing involvement with the Grovetown Lagoon Restoration Project. The school creek flows into the Grovetown Lagoon and the Grovetown Lagoon Trust have a shadehouse at the school, where native plants are grown. Students work with Trust volunteers to bag up the plants for planting at the lagoon.