Western Park 2019; what could we see? Boggy uneven mown grass with muddy wheel tracks, a water channel choked with weeds and collapsing banks feeding sediment downstream and into the bay, a straight ditch to the road, again full of weeds and rubbish. We tested the water for pollution and yes, pollution is what we found.

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“We can do something about this,” said one of our keen members plunging into the ditch and ripping weeds out like she was a rotary hoe.

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“We can make it look a whole lot more attractive with some landscaping design principals.”

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“We can stabilise the stream bank with native plants. We can slow the runoff into the stream with trees – using species that grew here for centuries and millennia before humans walked the Earth. And tall handsome trees will reduce the risk of flooding.”

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“We can make it look less like an unloved vacant block of land and more like the beautiful landscape it once was – more like it was before people swept aside its natural character.”

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“We can grow some tall trees to absorb carbon and reduce our impact on the climate…” we knew this would not make a big contribution, but every little bit helps.

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So we all got stuck in. We gathered locals together to pitch in and many hands killed the Kikuya grass, shifted soil, planted, weeded, mulched the ground and planted more the next season, and the next season.

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The rains came and then more rain and then Cyclone Gabriel - the floods surged, and bits of our roads disappeared into gullies, and houses teetered on the brink, but there was no more collapsing of the stream bank at Western Park. And then one day the sun came out and Western Park was looking pretty much a picture.

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If you would like to join in the fun or learn more about pests and how to nail them, then you are very welcome to come along to one of our community planting/weeding days.