Gully transformation: Taupo Intermediate students rescue native trees

Contact Energy representatives visited Taupō Intermediate to present $1000 for restoration planting after its efforts during Greening Taupō week. They are pictured in the cleared gully. Photo / NZME

Some said it couldn't be done. And even school staff admitted the size of the task was overwhelming.

But the scale of the challenge makes Taupō Intermediate School students' achievement all the more impressive - clearing a weed-infested gully behind the school to expose the native trees.

The trees were struggling under the sheer onslaught of the climbers entangling them and the entire area was so badly overgrown that nobody could even venture into it.

But the school's Kids Greening Taupō leadership team were undaunted by the challenge and by bringing the rest of the school along with them, they have managed a feat of Herculean proportions.

By having every Year 7 class put in two hours of work in the gully, bit by bit, the native plants were freed from their weed prison and the hillside revealed.

The gully-clearing project was almost accidental. Kids Greening Taupō is already running a restoration project on the other side of the school grounds, where trees have been planted to beautify the school.

But it was when Kids Greening Taupō education coordinator Rachel Thompson was visiting the restoration project that she spotted native trees in the gully behind the staff car park, smothered by jasmine and ivy.

The native trees in the gully at Taupō Intermediate School were struggling to survive an onslaught of climbing vines and weeds. Photo / Rachel Thompson

Kids Greening Taupō student leader Holly Constable says it was evident that the trees would not be able to survive much longer without help. The student leaders decided they needed to pull all the vines off the trees, remove the weeds and fix up the gully.

But with a team of 10 student leaders, it was too big a project for them to bite off alone and dangerous, because the ground was so covered that it was impossible to see where you were putting your feet.

"It is definitely the most daunting job that I have taken on with Kids Greening Taupō," Rachel says. "We had lots of people telling us that it couldn't be done."

However, help came from an unexpected quarter.

At the same time as the student leaders were considering how to tackle the gully restoration, Blue Light Taupō was running a programme called Te Iti Ti Kahurangi at the school and wanted to do a project connected to caring for Papatuanuku (Mother Earth). A session of gully restoration with Kids Greening Taupō was perfect.

Students working to clear the overgrown gully at Taupō Intermediate School. Photo / Rachel Thompson

The students got stuck in and Blue Light co-ordinator Andrea Southgate says they enjoyed the work so much that they have asked if they could come back to do more.

In addition, the Kids Greening Taupō student leaders enlisted the rest of the schools' students to help and with 12 classes doing two hours each on the project, the impossible suddenly seemed doable after all.

Armed with secateurs and loppers, each class enthusiastically got to work. The vines are so closely entangled in the trees that to pull them down directly would cause too much damage so instead the students had to cut around the vines at the base and wait for them to die before they can be removed. Holly says everyone was happy to be ripping the vines up.

"They were really excited and filled bag after bag with weeds."

The clear out has revealed a variety of different species growing in the gully including tanekaha, rimu, kauri, kapuka, kōwhai, akeake, whauwhaupaku (five finger), tarata (lemonwood), hoheria (lacebark), and kānuka.

Students filled bags and bags with the weeds they pulled out of the overgrown gully. Photo / Rachel Thompson

The next step will be to remove the dead vines and clear away any leftover rubbish so restoration planting can begin.

Luckily for the school, it won a $1000 prize for its efforts to go green during June's week-long Greening Taupō celebrations. During the week four Taupō Intermediate classes worked in the gully, the enviro team students led a Green Technology Day with buy-in from the technology teachers, put up a shade house, sent three classes of students to help at the Arbor Day planting and raised more than $700 for Greening Taupō and Kids Greening Taupō.

Contact Energy donated a $1000 restoration planting for the winning school, which was presented to the Kids Greening Taupō student leaders at a special school assembly.

Taupō Intermediate deputy principal Megan Chapman says the gully is still currently out of bounds but the school wants to eventually turn it into a learning area and will ask the students to design a user-friendly space for it, including a plaque or sign near each tree so students can identify the various species.

She says it is around 50 years since the trees were first planted and the work the students have done is amazing.