Conservation at The Little House on Lake Waikare

Last year we were approached by Environment Waikato (the local governing body who look after lakes, rivers, land, etc) who offered us some native plants, free of charge, as long as we were willing to plant them along our lake verge. Of course we accepted but, hadn't realised we'd have about 150 of them to plant!


When they arrived here, the land was really, really wet and boggy and there was no way we could get a car and trailer down there without becoming bogged so we put it off. We actually had a lot of rain right up until Christmas. So finally, after some nice weather, last weekend Iain and the girls packed all the plants onto the trailer and headed down to the lake to plant them out.

Agent Smelly in action.

The Fashionista doing her bit.

Here's part of the finished area.

In winter this area will be flooded so there are only two types of plants which they thought would survive those conditions.

At one stage when The Papa was pre-digging a pile of the holes, his little helpers got sidetracked and decided to immortalise our family in mud ...

Oh goodness I think I am the one on the right -

not sure about my hairstyle and I just knew I had to lose weight!

They went down at about 11am, came back up at 1pm for lunch, and an hour or so later headed back down til about 5pm. They got them all planted and I must admit I was really impressed with all their dedication and fortitude.