Tikorangi News

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Welcome to the first edition of Tikorangi News which your council has undertaken to write in response to complaints from a few local residents that they don’t know what is happening in their district. At New Lympouth District Council, we take our duty to consult local residents very seriously and we hope this newsletter will fill the gap. We would like to thank the guardians of the old Tikorangi Dairy Factory for making their butter wrapper available to use as letterhead, reminding us of the semi rural nature of the area. regular_smile

036• We at Council are deeply aware that traffic is a major issue for many Tikorangi residents but we have AWESOME news. We have brokered an arrangement between companies, their subcontractors and Tikorangi School. Starting next week, the trucks will be calling in to the school where the students will be painting happy faces on all the vehicles. We are confident that smiley faces will bring a smile to all Tikorangi residents as the trucks pass by. Drivers have also been instructed to give a cheery wave as they pass. regular_smile regular_smile regular_smile

• Graymooth Petroleum have told us that they are very, very sorry that their drilling rig on Kowhai B allegedly broke their consented noise levels on one occasion and they promise they are doing all they can to remedy this situation. We are confident that this is the case because they even returned our wet bus ticket to us. The good news is that they have nearly finished this well and may shortly be moving their rig to the Stratford area which means it will no longer be our concern. sad_smile

???????????????????????????????• Tikorangi residents will be as thrilled as Council is that the Len Lye Centre has been given the green light. It is only because of Toad Energy’s wonderful generosity that this project is going ahead. In recognition of the special relationship between Toad and Tikorangi, residents will be guaranteed free entry to the new centre when it opens for a period of five years. regular_smile
???????????????????????????????• A few residents have suggested that Greymooth are not abiding by their declared number of light vehicles on their Kowhai B site. We are pleased to report that Greymooth have assured us that they are abiding by all conditions of their consent. We suggest that busybody residents who have counted up to 17 light vehicles parked in the two carparks at the same time should perhaps find something better to do with their time and get a real job. There are only six light vehicles a day travelling to the Kowhai B site. Similarly, Toad have assured us that they too are keeping strictly to the terms of their consent and there are only 8 light vehicles and 3 heavy vehicles driving on to their Mangahewa C site in any 24 hour period during drilling activities.

???????????????????????????????• regular_smileThe next edition of the Tikorangi News will be called the Todger News after your council successfully negotiated a sponsorship deal with both Toad Energy and Greymooth Petroleum. This is good news because it means the special needs of Tikorangi will no longer be a drain on the other ratepayers of the district.

• Residents are reminded that they are best to contact the company concerned in the first instance when they have worries. This cuts out the middle man and companies can let us know what queries they have logged. We recently requested the logs from both Toad and Greymooth and were thrilled at the positive entries.
“Thanks so much for our awesome new road. Now we can speed down it at 120km an hour” said one Tikorangi East Road resident (Good news, Otaraoa Rd people. Roadworks will be starting in your area soon!)
“ Thanks guys for the generous gift of a hamper. My wife and I loved it. Now we no longer notice the sound of your generators and drilling rig at night.”
“Don’t take any notice of the carpers and moaners, guys. These few greenies are probably the same types who spend their time buggerising around on Facebook and besmirching the reputation of NLDC. We think you’re great. I will be back at work next week, by the way.”
It was wonderful to read so many positive comments and to know that the companies are taking such good care of you all. ???????????????????????????????

• On a more serious note, Council is reducing the affected party zone for new sites to those people whose residences are 20 metres or less from the site. This brings it in line with the notional boundary ruling in the District Scheme where noise levels are monitored at a distance of 20 metres from the nearest neighbouring houses. Effects from this change should be less than minor and no parties will be adversely affected. The rural character of the area will not be changed by this minor amendment.

• Big thanks go to both companies and their active programme of retro fitting double glazing in houses where the owners do not even have affected party status. This is a wonderfully generous move on their part and one which they are under no obligation to make. regular_smile

???????????????????????????????•cry_smile We are acting on concerns raised by an elected councillor at a recent Council meeting regarding malcontents in Tikorangi “besmirching the reputation of the Council”. He suggested a public education programme might be required. Council categorically rejects any insinuation that this may be a case of shooting the messenger and is investigating models of re-education programmes pioneered in the Soviet gulags, the Chinese re-education through labour programmes and the Vietnamese voluntary relocation strategies of the 1970s. We are confident that any troublemaking dissidents in Tikorangi can and will be dealt with promptly and efficiently and will no longer be able to embarrass your council and to sully the reputation of Taranaki.

• Finally, in response to community concerns, we at New Lympouth District Council can assure Tikorangi residents that as far as disruption as a result of the petrochemical industry is concerned, we will leave no stone unturned in our quest to find where the buck stops. We think it may be with central government but we are mindful it may even be international – maybe WTO or OPEC.

• Kia kaha Tikorangi! And remember, you drive a car so you can’t complain. regular_smile

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Garden lore

“ My garden is an honest place. Every tree and every vine are incapable of concealment, and tell after two or three months exactly what sort of treatment they have had.”

Journals by Ralph Waldo Emerson (published 1909-1913)

??????????????????????????????? The very hungry monarch caterpillars

There is something bravely optimistic in the sight of a diaspora of monarch caterpillars heading away from a swan plant they have totally stripped, in search of another food source. This is even more so if you know there are no more swan plants around and judging by online searches and discussions, the state of the monarchs’ food supplies at this time of the year is causing a great deal of angst.

Do not panic. Reach for slices of pumpkin instead. We have done it here in one crisis year with good success rates. The NZ monarch butterfly website (www.monarch.org.nz) tells me that you can also use cucumber and courgette. But these options are not a complete diet and are only suitable for caterpillars which are already half grown, or about 10 days old.

What we did was to confine the caterpillars to an extremely large carton (so they didn’t head off looking for swan plants) with plenty of twiggy sticks so they could pupate and hang as cocoons successfully. We replaced the sliced pumpkin every day or two. Being caterpillars, they feed constantly from one end and excrete from the other – their poos were an astonishing orange.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Plant Collector: Nerine filifolia

The daintiest of nerines - N. filifolia

The daintiest of nerines – N. filifolia

Nerines are a star of our autumn garden so the appearance of N.filifolia always arouses that slight sense of autumnal melancholy in me, coinciding as it does with the realisation that the days are getting shorter again. But the references tell me that in fact it is summer flowering and certainly it is always the first nerine to bloom here. It is also the daintiest member of that family that we have. It is tiny. While the stems can be about 25cm long, individual flowers are only a cm across at most with particularly frilly, waved petals in deep pink and nine flowers to each head.

The filifolia part of the name means fine foliage, grass-like in the vernacular. With us it is evergreen. In harder climates, it may lose its leaves. Like all nerines, it is a South African bulb, from the Eastern Cape area. It builds up easily and is not fussy in the garden, as long as it doesn’t get swamped by stronger growing plants.

Nobody could call it spectacular. It is just one of those little treasures that adds detail and seasonal interest to the garden. The problem will be sourcing bulbs. You will probably only find it from bulb specialists or other gardeners, though Trade Me is always worth watching for odd plants that are not widely available these days.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Allotments and community gardens

The New Brighton community gardens

The New Brighton community gardens

I concluded last week’s column on the lost gardens of Christchurch with the vibrant New Brighton Community Gardens.

I always follow allotments with interest when I visit the UK and I believe they are found in some Northern European countries too. They have been around for a long time. Apparently when people live in densely populated areas with little personal space, there are some for whom the urge to grow plants, usually vegetables, remains so strong that they will walk or drive to another space to satisfy that need.

Allotments with a million pound view at Gerrans in Cornwall

Allotments with a million pound view at Gerrans in Cornwall

Traditionally our sections or plots of land in this country have been so generous that there was no need for allotments on public land. The quarter acre per family is quite sufficient for most. But of course the quarter acre section is on the way out, in our major cities at least. These days people are more likely to find themselves on an area half that size or less and much of the land will be taken up by the larger footprint of many modern houses.

Community gardens appear to find more favour with local authorities. The word “community” has a better ring to it than the individualism which is a part of the allotment, although in the UK many allotment areas operate somewhere in between. While they retain individual plots, a high level of interaction, cooperation and community can evolve – and with that, peer pressure to keep your allotment up to scratch.

No one system fits all. Community gardens fill a different niche. Everything is shared and participants or volunteers are required to work within that cooperative ethos. I don’t think it is a coincidence that community gardens are springing up through Christchurch – over 30 of them, I was told. In the aftermath of the quake, there is comfort in community at a very local level.

004The New Brighton Community Gardens were created before the earthquakes but the coordinator, Catherine O’Neill, told me that interest had grown exponentially since those events and she now has around 100 volunteers registered. For two hours work a week in the gardens, they can take home free vegetables. This project goes way beyond just the gardens, though they are at the heart of it.

It is the site of a former sports club (croquet, then bowls if my memory serves me correctly), so it did come with a very handy building incorporating toilets, kitchen and a good sized meeting room. The building is used by other community groups as well as being a base for the gardening volunteers and related workshops.

On a sunny summer’s day, the gardens were a riot of colourful flowers and vegetables. There is so much more to it than mass producing utility cabbages and Catherine observed that they wanted them to be a place of beauty and colour as well. There is a growing recognition now that it makes good sense to inter-plant vegetables with flowers which can attract and feed beneficial insects but flowers also lift the spirits with a joy that it is hard for a carrot to manage.

A quaint bird house built by a volunteer at the New Brighton Community Gardens

A quaint bird house built by a volunteer at the New Brighton Community Gardens

This particular community garden has developed in infrastructure which includes a paid coordinator. Its success must lie in part with having found coordinators who have gardening skills, interpersonal skills and a strong sense of community. There must also be people in the background with good administrative and fund raising skills because there is a need for some outside funding. These things do not run themselves.

It will be interesting to see how the community gardens and allotments develop in the next decade or two in Christchurch. One aspect of the quake damage is the large number of plots of land which are likely to remain vacant for some time to come. While there is a certain amount of guerrilla gardening going on and some less guerrilla-like and more community-based (you can check out Greening the Rubble on line), will it be just a matter of time before residents spread their wings – or their patch of dirt in this case? There is a limit to how many green parks, gardens and street plantings rate-payers will want to pay for Council to maintain and it certainly won’t be taking in all the open space that is being created. In the new normality that Christchurch has forged, it is likely that some local residents will start expanding their gardening space.

The indefatigable gardener and garden writer, Di Madgin, told me that she would be needing an allotment when they move to their new house shortly because it is in an area of high density housing. She offered up what must surely be one of the most practical suggestions to combat the destructive nature of vandals where gardened areas are not attached to a house. Beehives. “A larrikin would never try to graffiti a beehive more than once,” she said.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

The Lost Gardens of Christchurch

Behind every overgrown gateway, there is a personal story

Behind every overgrown gateway, there is a personal story

I went to Christchurch last weekend.

It is very hard to grasp the sheer scale of what has happened in Christchurch when you don’t know the city well to start with and you are gaining most of your information from the mainstream media. That is not a criticism of the media. It is just that the biggest and most spectacular will get covered (such as the demolition of the CBD) or the most extreme (families still living in caravans or garages). In between lie tens of thousands of individual domestic stories of lives changed forever.

I stayed in an old part of the city, immediately beside a red zoned area alongside the Avon River and my evening strolls took me down streets which are to be cleared by July. The water level in the river has risen and these residential areas are deemed too high a risk to repair. It was poignant in the extreme.

Graffiti and vandalism abound

Graffiti and vandalism abound

Initially there was a slight thrill of mystery and the classic children’s novel “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett kept coming to mind as I peered at overgrown gateways and glimpses of houses behind rampant foliage. These had been gardens tended down the years until the earthquakes. With no humans in residence any longer, the plants were taking over and there was a sense of wild abandon.

I quelled those sentimental thoughts very quickly. Behind every one of these gates, often hanging crookedly, behind every garden wall or fence – usually broken – lay a personal story of distress, probably of hardship and extreme dislocation. I just didn’t know the individual stories but I was embarrassed by my trite romanticism.

It was unbelievably haunting. Along River Road, maybe one house in ten was still occupied (though not for much longer now). A second house in every ten had already been demolished. The remaining eight were empty. Some were clearly damaged badly, others less so. But as the people move out, the vandals move in. There was graffiti everywhere on top of damage that was not always earthquake related. That edge of lawlessness and sense of only just holding the ugly side of humankind at bay adds to the feelings of tension and dislocation.

I imagine it is like London after the Blitz. There is no quick fix here. It will take 20 years before the new face of Christchurch takes over and entire generations will have been changed forever by the experience of living through the new normality that is life in that city.

So what happens to formerly loved suburban gardens that are abandoned?

Grass grows but rather than long, rank, greenish mix of grasses that we get in wetter climates, this is tinder dry and uniformly brown. The fire hazard is such that some properties with larger lawns have clearly had the grass cut, presumably with line trimmers, as a safety precaution.

Trees and shrubs survive and keep growing and flowering. But without a garden owner trimming them back, they encroach ever further, making passage difficult.

Wisterias were obviously much favoured and will survive no matter what. Unpruned, they are stretching out their tentacles in every direction, taking control. The same is true of ivy.

Hydrangeas and roses, growing ever larger, flower on.

Historic house sitting in limbo but the gorse and broom are staging a comeback in the central city

Historic house sitting in limbo but the gorse and broom are staging a comeback in the central city

Only the toughest of perennials survive and probably sooner rather than later, the convolvulus will smother everything. That is if the perennial pink climbing pea doesn’t get there first. It was interesting to see gorse and broom moving back in to inner city locations. It is likely that this was the effect of liquefaction bringing long dormant seed to the surface because it must be many decades since these plants were grown in inner city Christchurch.

Formality and garden design disappears very quickly. It made me reflect that the whole notion of formal design is an imposition by humans on the natural landscape. Left to its own devices, nature moves straight back in and blurs all the hard edges before swamping them out altogether. In fact there are few right angles left anywhere in that area. Everything is dislocated and angled off the true and formerly straight lines waver, even on the roads.

The contrived water features just looked sad, tacky and derelict. They were bereft of any water. I guess the watertight seal on most had been broken when the ground heaved so violently and the long dry summers mean there is no accumulation of rain water.

It wasn’t actually depressing, more disconcerting to find a formerly pleasant and staid leafy suburb turned upside down.

To then visit the nearby New Brighton community gardens was like a breath of life with a vibrant community response to a shared crisis. Community gardens are sprouting like Topsy. I was told there are over 30 of them now throughout Christchurch but their story will have to wait for another day.

Roses flower on in formerly loved gardens, now abandoned

Roses flower on in formerly loved gardens, now abandoned

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.