Group helps Rapaki get its bush back

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 15

Group helps Rapaki get its bush back

By

GARRY ARTHUR

Rapaki Bay in Lyttelton Harbour, once well-wooded with tall kahikatea, miro, matai and other native trees, but heavily eroded since the European arrival, is being restored to its former bushy glory. Last Sunday Maori residents of Rapaki Marae, together with families from the Canterbury Landscape Group, helped the Ministry of Forestry plant out 1200 young kahikatea, ribbonwoods and ngaio to reafforest the bay. This is the second year that young trees have been planted there, covering about 2.5 hectares near the foreshore, where there is a public walkway. Last year kowhai, ribbonwoods and flaxes were planted. The work is being done under the Community Forests and Woodlands Programme, which now comes under the Department of Conservation. Under this scheme, money for tree-planting on community land is provided by the department. “We were approached by the marae to look at some bad erosion at Rapaki,” says Steve Thompson, manager of the Ministry’s landscape unit, "and we gave them some ideas on reestablishing native species in the gullies. “Because of the extra cost, and the fact that it was a new idea,

we decided to do it ourselves as a research area.” Seed for the young trees was collected from around Lyttelton Harbour, rather than using material from out of the district. "It’s important to use local material,” says Mr Thompson, "because this keeps the planting ecologically correct. Trees around the harbour have evolved for those conditions.” Seedlings were then raised at the Ministry of Forestry nursery at Rangiora. Last year’s planting had an 80 per cent survival rate, considered pretty good considering the pressure from rabbits, the climate and public use of the bay. "To keep costs down,” says Mr Thompson, “the Canterbury Landscape Group helped with the labour. They’ve all got green fingers.” The nursery is still growing stock on for the project, and under “user pays” the marae now buys the plants from the Ministry at cost The Canterbury Landscape Group began in 1977 essentially as a forum for landscape architects and contractors working in that field to discuss topics of mutual interest. They held meetings, visited landscape projects

and nurseries, and began giving expert evidence at planning hearings and tribunals. This year, however, they .set up a Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects to cater for their professional interests, and the Landscape Group was thrown open to a whole range of people interested in their environment "Through the Victoria Square tower issue we can see that there are a number of people who are interested in the Canterbury environment, and this is a forum for them to get involved,” says the group’s chairperson, Jenny Moore, who is a landscape architect with the Ministry of Forestry’s landscape unit “I’d like to see a broader range of people in the group.” Each month the group holds a meeting with an appropriate speaker. On October 14, Mr Bill Williams, former Christchurch City Planner, is to talk about the Christchurch cityscape. The Landscape Group also helped raise money for Mount Vernon Park by selling screen prints of Quail Island. It was behind a series of articles about landscape architecture in “The Press,” and in 1984, the Year of the Urban Tree, the group held a

seminar on trees. In 1985 the Landscape Group put together a submission with the Historic Places Trust, the Institute of Architects and the Civic Trust on the redevelopment of Victoria Square. The Victoria Square Advisory Group (since disbanded) arose from that. Treatment of the riverbank — “turning the Avon into a canal with stone banks” — is one of the things about Christchurch’s appearance that is worrying the Landscape Group. Another is the Victoria Square tower proposal. The group’s committee is united in opposition to it, on the grounds that it is inappropriate for the city and changes the character of Christchurch for the worse. “If the City Council decides for it, we’ll object,” says Mrs Moore.

“We are essentially interested in the treatment of existing open spaces and keeping the character of Christchurch as a garden city,” she says. “It’s the hard, insensitive engineering treatment of the city’s landscape that we are concerned about “We’re concerned about trees being removed where things could be designed around them. Developers and architects think that trees are dispensable — they don’t recognise the specific character that trees have in the cityscape. Often people don’t look critically at existing features before they move in. And often, if they promise replanting it doesn’t happen because of changes to the scheme.” Visitors are impressed by the low scale of Christchurch, Jenny Moore believes, and the fast-

rising high-technology buildings now going up are in danger of destroying that In contrast she points to some "very nice small-scale development, such as some of the small in-fill blocks around the city where there have been attempts to keep the facade in line with the character of the city — sympathetic to the existing charShe notes that a survey by Lincoln College landscape students found that Christchurch people liked most their grassed areas, parks and open spaces. The Landscape Group offers involvement in its pressure group activities,, field trips, plantings and educational activities aimed at increasing “landscape awareness.” The group can be reached at P.O. Box 13-229, Christchurch.