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.