June was a fantastic month for community-driven environmental restoration around the East Coast Bays and Hibiscus Coast. With dedicated volunteers and favourable weather (mostly), we achieved significant progress across several reserves. Here’s a recap of the amazing work done and the wonderful people who made it happen. 

Deep Creek and Aickin Reserve  
Our first planting of the season took place close to the beach at Waiake, focusing on infill planting in Aickin Reserve and the steep bank on the east side of the Beach Road bridge. Despite the challenging terrain, our team did an amazing job planting among the established natives. It was an area for mountain goats rather than people, but the results were spectacular! 

Taiorahi / Speedy Reserve, Murrays Bay  
On a very wet day, over 600 plants were delivered, but the sun decided to shine on us for the planting the next day. We planted a new buffer zone to complement the beautiful established reserve. Joy, true to her name, brought some home baking, which we devoured appreciatively.  

Campbell Glade, Waiake  
This little gem, nestled between Hebron Road and Beach Road, now has native trees outnumbering exotics after a mammoth effort by our hard-working regular volunteers. Again, we were blessed with fine weather! 

Taiaotea Reserve, Browns Bay  
The local Air Scout group came out in force, contributing half of our planters. Thanks to their efforts, and the work of a regular group clearing the weeds, we were able to plant in a larger accessible area. The Air Scouts provided hot and cold drinks, biscuits, and even washed our spades! A superb effort by everyone involved. 

Bushglen Reserve, Browns Bay  
We had a great turnout with some volunteers coming from as far away as Papakura and Mt Roskill. Despite wet and muddy conditions, Bushglen’s picturesque reserve made up for the mushy planting experience. Special thanks to Kathy McCormack for her pre- and post-planting work. 

Amorino Park 
Despite a terrible weather forecast, we enjoyed fabulous winter sunshine for our in-fill planting (adding a further 420 plants to fill in the gaps in our planting site). 

Kath Hopper 
In a rare weekday planting, we were joined by a good number of volunteers including a group from Eroad and Ray White Orewa, in yet more glorious sunshine. The planting site was wet, as promised (it is a saltmarsh!), so we had lots of muddy fun, getting 1000 plants planted into the mud. Ray White Orewa very kindly brought us lunch. And, a group of 29 young people completing their Duke of Edinburgh award joined us in the afternoon to finish the day!