WCC Nursery Visit.

A beautiful bunch of Nikau.

Today we went to the Wellington City Council nursery of plants.

We went to the plant nursery and we learn’t lots about plants and how to take care of plants, shrubs and other things.

We learned that our ancestors turned most of the hills into sheep paddocks by chopping trees and clearing the land. Houses are there now and WEEDS.  The council wants to turn it back to a native environment by planting the native trees that used to be there.  These include Kowhai, flax, Nikau, Totara, Miro and about 150 other species.

Also a lot of modern nurseries are very big and have robots running the operation. The city council one is smaller and people do all the work. There are still thousands of plants and most of them are natives.

Dave the nursery manager showed us around.  We looked in all the shade houses, from the smallest, newly germinated plants to the ones which are a few years old almost ready for planting out.

  Fun facts about plants  

•  When you grow kowhai in a plastic bag it will spiral up the plastic bag like a staircase.
• They are inventing new ways to pot plants so that they don’t use plastic.  One of the new methods is made from a composite of pine bark.  
• Some pots are designed to encourage root growth throughout the pot. These pots encourage root growth and are recyclable because they open out.           

To be Leaders in the Shade House We will need to:

• Think about what plants we want to grow, endemic species not weeds
• Look after the plants that are growing
• Tell other kids about what is happening in the Shade House and show them how to respect the plants
• Teach other kids to be leaders especially some of the year 3 kids
• Organising a supply of seed raising mix and gravel.  How do we fund this?

What we Need to do in our Shade House.

• Learn about the species we need to grow
• Find seeds and people who can help us collect them, maybe Joakim.  (Seed collection permit?)
• Investigate how much water is needed
• Get a supply of seed raising mix and fine gravel
• You need to know what the plants feel like and you need to know if they need to be in light, shade or something inbetween.

We finished off our tour by planting some flax seeds.  

We thought it was very good place for plants to grow and it was very fun and we learnt a lot. We are very lucky to be able to go to that place and we also thank  John .  “Thank you John”