Native plantings an their co-benefits

Saturday 11 May 2024 from 9:30 to 12:00 pm
Mahakaruna Farm, 75 Thorp Orinoco Road, Ngatimoti

The Motueka Catchment Collective Biodiversity and Restoration group invites you to a planting workshop held at Mahakaruna farm, near Ngatimote. This includes a walk around a successful, well established native planting, of 50,000 native plants which is ongoing. These have been managed both conventionally and, in some places, organically.

The farm is a 75 ha organic farm owned by Gary and Meg Hirsberg. Gary co-founded Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest organic yoghurt brand and champions organic production around the world. Their journey on this property has involved BioGro organic certification, native reforestation (organic and non-organic), and infrastructure development. The farm is in the process of establishing certified organic herb and vegetable market gardens, fruit, nuts and olives, an heirloom apple orchard, livestock and honey. The centre combines organics and entrepreneurship and will eventually feature several NZ-owned organic micro-enterprises.

The native plantings, practical demonstration of planting and native nursery, will be the focus of this event.

There will also be a talk via zoom by Brad Howlett from Plant and Food. He will be reporting on his 2 million project which is supported by a number of farming organisations as well as the government. The project seeks to find optimal mix of native plant species, planting areas, and planting landscapes to maximise the number of insects providing pollination and predation behaviour without creating refuges for insect pests. He will talk about designing native plantings that might best optimise insect populations for pollination for pastoral farmers (clover pollination, crops) and horticulture (kiwifruit, apples) and for lifestylers. He will cover his latest results on which natives promote most pollinating insects and beneficial predator insects and how can a native planting be best designed to achieve these outcomes.

A BBQ will be provided after the workshop.

To register go to this link – https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JDQD5H5