Planting trees for the kids

May 2025

My daughter's kōwhai and a koromiko planted where a monkey apple used to be

Because of lomandra, which I'm beginning to think I can blame for all first world problems, I lost the opportunity to plant trees in Spring, because I only had time to plant up the flower garden. Now Autumn is here and I have a shortish window to plant before the garden becomes a quagmire. This is not unusual. At our last house, we couldn't use the back garden at all in winter and although we arrived here in September, I couldn't explore all the garden until well into the next month, because slopes + mud = accidents. I had a bruise on my backside to prove it. Anyway, on the last weekend in April we finally got around to starting #5 on the project plan:

5. Need in-fill planting where problem trees removed.

At the last house, both my children had native trees planted for them. Whilst hubby and I are both immigrants, our children were born in New Zealand and have spent all their lives within a few square kilometres of the North Shore. To acknowledge their link to this land and the customs of the land, when each of the children were little, the family gathered together and we planted them a native tree to be nourished by the placenta that had nourished them. The Te Reo Māori words for land and for placenta are the same - whenua - and it is Māori custom after birth to return the whenua (placenta) to whenua (land). My son had a pohutukawa planted for him and my daughter had a putaputawētā (marbleleaf).

They are older now and they got to choose their own trees for this new garden. My son chose to have the same tree, a pohutukawa, as before. He liked the shape of his tree and enjoyed it when the tūī would perch in it. My daughter originally wanted a nikau palm, but when we got to the new house we realised there were already a lot of nikau in the bush, so she chose a kōwhai. Obviously there were not placentas to plant under these trees, but we chose to plant the kids' milk teeth under each as a token. My son has lost a smile's worth of baby teeth, but my daughter has only lost a couple. Still, it's the thought that counts.

Hubby digging a hole for our son's pohutukawa

My daughter, who is 7, wanted to write about her tree for the blog herself, so the words below are her own. I was consulted on some of the spelling, but not all, so there are editor's notes and I added the first couple of full stops, so it wasn't a Faulkner novel.

i know our land is beautiful. we have a mini waterfall and more. i plant my kowfi [kōwhai] tree were i want and i can see it every day. and it was asome [awesome] to see it grow and now its a tiny tree. and its still in the garden today 2025 the thursday 22nd of may. and its on my bridge today [by the boardwalk] and i can see it everyday and even after school. maybe and it could feed the birds and not get eaten by snails and trees are part of the environment.

The hope is that the trees will help generate kaitiakitanga - guardianship - of the land and a sense of connection to this new home. The garden size is a bit intimidating (for me too, kids, for me too) and my interest in ecosystem restoration automatically means its boring and unworthy of their attention. Hopefully seeing their trees grow and feed the local native wildlife will seed a sense of responsibility for their environment and get over the "mum factor" of it all.

A pīwakawaka, who came to supervise the planting

Hubbie and I also had trees at the old place (really the only other trees a small garden could hold). He had a Dicksonia squarrosa - rough tree fern - he could see out of the window from his garage workbench and I had a Lighthouse pohutukawa, which is a selected form from Rangitoto, the volcano that dominates the Hauraki Gulf. During the writing of this blog post, we have decided to have trees here in the new garden too. Hubby would like a ponga - a silver fern - planted for him and my tree will be the kōtukutuku - tree fuchsia - with its beautiful peeling bark and nectar-rich flowers, if I can get my hands on one for the side of the stream. Perhaps even we grown ups need a greater sense of connection to this new landscape that will forever be part of our family's story.