Native forest fringe started at corner

Trees of Martinborough volunteers hard at it planting scores of trees on golf course land.

“We want this to be a dense stand of native bush in decades to come, an asset to the Golf Course and to the whole town.”

That’s how Trees of Martinborough group founder Martin Freeth describes the scores of native saplings – from Totara and Kahikatea to Manuka and Kouka – planted at the Todd’s Road corner of Martinborough Golf Course by a volunteer band last month.

The project, with trees funded by the Community Board and sourced from two local native plant murseries, adds to a 2021 planting which has already produced native saplings up to two metres high.

The earlier work over about half an acre at the corner was carried out by the golf club, local school children and the South Wairarapa Biodiversity Group. The latest planting ties that planting into two long lines of Totara saplings planted by the golf club after it removed a stand of pines along the club’s 11^th fairway.

“It’s a place where people can wander up with a path through the middle of the trees and a little clearing area where they can look out to the (eastern) hills _ so as not to interfere with the golf,” Freeth told The Star as the planting progressed. 

“The more trees the better really as they are the glue that encourages people to come here. Natives (trees) get us all going and this is a collaboration between the Community Board and this new Trees of Martinborough network.”

The wider connection includes the South Wairarapa Biodiversity Group, Martinborough Golf Club and the Featherston Native nursery – Pae tū Mōkai o Tauira which, along with the nursery at Kohanui Marae, was the source of the plants.

Already a spread of mulch has been placed round the newly-planted saplings from the golf club’s stocks and a lime chip pathway is being formed as a walk through the expanded native planting.

With a hard summer predicted, Freeth was delighted to be told the golf club has a portable water-and-pumping sprinkler system which can be used to keep the tiny saplings alive if the expected drought begins to bite. 

He said the move is indicative of the groundswell of people wanting to plant more natives and seeking out “bush walk” experiences.

The planting will be accessible through the Todd’s Road frontage of the course, after the club removed the “feral wattles” which were hogging the corner and blocking the driving line-of-sight.

Sheltering douglas firs will be left standing but other wattles and lucernes will be tidied away as the golf course frontage is improved.

The project was “another opportunity for people to get involved in tree planting at their own pace.

“I’ve got a theory that everybody feels good after they’ve been planting trees for an hour or two, it uplifts the spirit,” Freeth said as the saplings began to reshape the fairway’s edge.