Welcome to our autumn newsletter. When the days are starting to get shorter again we know it is time to gear up for a new planting season. Our team are currently out and about assessing planting sites and matching these with schools for our upcoming winter planting days.

This year, we will be planting with 188 schools across Aotearoa - a record number of Trees for Survival schools! We are looking forward to hopefully plant 140,000 native plants this year - protecting waterways and creating habitat for native wildlife as well as forming lasting memories with our fantastic schools, partners and awesome Trees for Survival community.

We are especially excited this year as we will be planting with new schools in new areas: Coromandel, Taranaki, Whakatāne and Opotiki. We would especially like to thank our new schools for coming on board, Marc and Sally at TfS for organising this and the wider team including the many Menz Sheds who all worked together to establish the Trees for Survival programme in these new areas.
 

And a special thank you goes to Todd Energy, our regional partner in Taranaki, for helping us bring Trees for Survival to schools across the Taranaki region.

 A tribute to Noel Holyoake - founder of Trees for Survival


It was with great sadness that we had to share the news of Noel's passing with you earlier this month. Noel's foresight and vision 33 years ago led to the founding of the Trees for Survival Charitable Trust. Noel watched Trees for Survival grow into a success planting programme that reaches many schools across beautiful Aotearoa and he has served Trees for Survival as a board member and later patron until his passing.

Noel will be missed by the Trees for Survival team and our thoughts are with his family at this time.
In lieu of flowers, Noel requested that donations can be made to Trees for Survival and we would like to thank all of you who have done so and also sent their heartfelt messages in honour of Noel.

New irrigation timers for school 

      

In 2022, we started rolling out new irrigation timers to our schools to help with water management and sustainability. We are equipping our schools with rain sensor Toro timers which are a fantastic upgrade from our existing timers. TfS conducted a 10 school trial of the Toro rain sensor timers over the summer of 2021/22. This is the time that is most important for TfS to have reliable irrigation systems, as over this period even a couple of days without watering badly effects our little seedlings. The trial was a great success with the Toro timers from Parkland Products performing very well. 
All schools that joined us in 2022 have already received the Toro timers and many of our existing schools have also received them. We are pleased to announce that over the next few months we will be installing Toro timers in all TfS schools in the Auckland, Northland, Taranaki, and Bay of Plenty regions. 

A big thank you goes to our Logistics Manager Marc who is doing a fantastic job organising the timer upgrade project. Marc played a central role in selecting the right product for our schools' needs with great help from our supporters Parkland Products. He is also doing an outstanding job managing the installation of the new timers as well as training our teachers and facilitators in their operation. Most of our community production partners at the Menz Sheds have also been undertaking installation and maintenance of these new timers, building capacity and capabilities for the future.

 

Landowner Success story



We were thrilled to receive an email from a previous landowner sharing with us an update from a planting they received in 2015. Ardmore School, who have been a Trees for Survival School for 23 years (since 1999!), planted these native trees in 2015 and the results 8 years on are a true testimony to the great job the students did.

Thank you for sharing your journey with us:

"8 years ago, Ardmore students worked hard to plant out a corner of our paddock that is next to a very old bush block. It's been an extremely satisfying and humbling few years since watching it all take off and grow. The tuis, piwakawaka and kotare find food in there now and recently we've found that Weta have moved in, they hide under the old cabbage tree leaves. Thank you Ardmore school for creating fantastic native habitat where there was once only mud and grass. Your planting here will be included in a covenant which will protect it forever."

We would also like to thank Watercare who have supported Ardmore School in the Trees for Survival programme when they planted this site in 2015 and are still supporting Ardmore School along with five other schools in the Hunua area.