Earth Day - Planting Natives for Future Generations

The 22nd of April is Earth Day, as most of you will know, a day to celebrate nature and the green places, but also a chance to get involved for some of us. For me, this meant taking a dive into Early Learning!

No, I did not regress so much that I had to start schooling again, instead I returned to assist in planting, and accidentally found myself teaching 80-90 eager looking kiddos about trees.

I haven't spent much time in this area historically, in fact I find myself either behind a computer monitor, or on a shovel daily, so opportunities to teach in an area I am passionate about are quite rare, so truly as much as stage fright does overtake, it's a wonderous experience to get a moment to hopefully inspire someone else to take up tools themselves, and see to it that their kids get to see the world we have built - or more aptly for me - grown.

Kauri - Agathis australis - was the queen of the day, this pair coming all the way north from Palmy to get their time in the sun, and standing at 5+ meters they really did stand out. But, bedding them, digging out their new homes for the next few centuries, and getting them protected with some mulch and tree rings until the rest of the project can be completed, kind of brought something home for me. This was my start in gardens, I remember quite fondly my Great Grandmother's rose garden at the retirement village, a symbolic rose to remind me of this fact is actually tattooed on my chest, but her time and effort curating a garden, teaching me about pansy cultivars, I can only hope that in time I'll teach someone else this compassion for plants and gardens. Maybe, just maybe, one of these tikes is looking up at those giants and thinking "Cool, I want to plant trees like this one day".