Revegetation: How many Plants!!!!!

 Revegetation: How Many Plants!!!!

We were recently fortunate enough to be given 400 native plants under the "Restoring the Moutere" project which aims to have 270,000 new trees planted in the Moutere Catchment are over the next three years using a $1.9 million grant from the One Billion Trees initiative. The project aims to achieve a catchment-scale restoration of native riparian ecosystems and wetlands and improve the water quality for the Moutere River and its tributaries and inlet.

All the family have been involved in the planting (some a little reluctantly I have to say:>) but I think that it is important that they understand and get first hand experience of planting trees and see that their parents also think that it is an important activity. We have set aside about 10% of our property for replanting, largely around its perimeters where the Flaxmore drain and the Company Ditch runs.

All the family were involved in the planting

Plants by the Company Ditch

Plants by the Flaxmore Drain.

To date we have planted around 300 plants and I can tell you it is a herculean task especially where the soil is stony and a pick axe has to be used to make the hole! It is slow and arduous! But we are getting there.

However once we started planting it became apparent that the number of plants that we had was insufficient for the areas that we wanted to plant so I ask for additional plants and got another 300 plants.

Lets look at the maths for how many plants are required to revegetate a 1 hectare plot. If the plants are planted at 1.5m intervals this means that in one line there would be 100/1.5 plants = 67 plants. so in 1 hectare (100m x 100m) we would need 67 x 67 plants = 4,489 plants!!!! What the heck that is a lot of plants!

Our property is 10 acres big = 4 hectares. If we intend to revegetate 10% then that is 0.4 hectares which would require 4,489 plants per hectare x 0.4 = 1,795 OMG so many!!!!

We have received 700 plants so far which is only 39% of the number of plants that we require. 

I can see another request for plants being developed for next year ( which is the final year of the programme).

It is INCREDIBLE just how many plants are needed for revegetation programmes.