ST. CLAIR TO LAWYER HEAD

Evening Star, Issue 18144, 7 December 1922, Page 4

ST. CLAIR TO LAWYER HEAD

WHO FIRST PLANTED THE LUPINES? MR BATHGATE GIVES THE ANSWER. Admiration of tho great display of lupines, tho stretch of bloom being from St. Clair to Tomahawk,, has set people talking about tho origination of tho scheme, and several names have been mentioned 1 in this journal. _ One gentleman said he (remembered quite well that Dr Coughtrey, Mr W. Smaill, and Mr Sam Brookes had a great deal to do with Die early .sowing. Then came a communication from another resident, claiming the honor of pioneering in this matter for Mr J. J. Pryor. Now w© are able to push back the. record to an early stag© and give a definite statement as to tho actual starting, of the work. Mr A. Bathgate, who is the first authority on the subject, kindly supplies, tho particulars. ll© shows that tho Amenities Society is entitled to the credit. This is* the way Mr Bathgate states tho matter: “We ■'heard about tho reclamation of the sand areas in -San Francisco and how the people there had converted a waste in,to the Golden Gate Park. Wo wrote to Mr Charles Reid, a former resident of Dunedin, asking him to get for the Amenities Society what information was available as to the means adopted. Mr Reid) sent to ns a copy of the report of the reserves superintendent, and from this wo saw that the San Francisco operations began with the’ sowing of lupines and the planting of a grass very like if net identical with our marrajn. Then wo wrote to the Golden Gate Park authorities, asking if they could) send us seeds of tho lupine and plants of the grass, and we offered to either pay for those things or to send in exchange sonic New Zealand seeds and plants. Tho San Francisco authorities thereupon sent na lupine seed of two kinds. They said they could not supply seed of tho grass,, but they sent some plants. The bag containing these plants was unfortunately carried on to Sydney, and by tho time it reached us the plants were all dead. The lupine seed came to hand all right. One sort was a dwarf bln© lupine which did not propagate itself. The other sort was the tree lupine which is now in evidence. There was ah the time a road from the sandhills to Lawyer Head, a road made by the Defence Department. The Tomahawk Road Board was put to some expense to keep that road clear of drifting sand. Seeing that our lupines were doing well, the road board got a large supply o! lupin© seed from Mr J. J. Pryor, who imported it from Germany. That seed took root freely. As to the marram, we arranged with the Tomahawk Road Board to share the expense of bringing a ton of the plants from the shores of the North Island, and Mr Smaill took a lot of interest in getting that properly planted. The first trees planted on the Dunedin sandhills were (got by our society from the railway nursery in Canterbury', and planted on. the north side of Tahuna Park. Wo gave a few of those trees to Mr Hancock, and he planted them at St. Hilda.”