About 1200 aging pine trees were removed dur­ing the recent Tinakori Hill clean up, but over the next five years, Pro­ject Crim­son and the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil will be plant­ing around 7500 north­ern rata (met­ros­ider­os robusta). North­ern rata are indi­gen­ous to the Wel­ling­ton area and live for hun­dreds of years. The first 1500 baby trees will be planted this winter in an area of 1000 square metres that was cleared in the clean-up.

The first pub­lic plant­ing takes place this Sunday 26 June from 9am to mid­day. Meet at the ten­nis court at the top of Weld Street in Wadestown, and bring gloves and a spade.

Per­haps a chance to make the Wel­ling­ton­ist a car­bon-neut­ral activ­ity? Not to men­tion the joy we’ll get out of a brightly crim­son Tinakori Hill dur­ing the sum­mer months.