The Harris Scientific reserve rang with the sounds of shovels and light conversation on Sunday morning.

35 volunteers showed up to plant around 800 Canterbury-native trees.

“The trees are all from dryland sites in Mid Canterbury,” Ashburton Forest & Bird chairperson Edith Smith said.

Smith said kāinga, a shrub-like tree with similar flowers to mānuka, used to prevail in this area.

“When Arthur [Harris] bought the property, there was kāinga all around here.”

Shirley Harris, who originally owned the land with her late husband, Arthur, has been excited to see how the land’s reverted back to its former self over the years.

“It’s just like a museum of plants.”

“These girls do a brilliant job keeping on top of it.”

Harris and her husband decided to sell the land to the council after getting comments from passersby about the native plants.

“We had people who drove past and saw the value of the kāinga.”

The council initially wanted to use it as a refuse site, but it wasn’t fit for purpose, and was passed along to the Ashburton Community Conservation Trust.

Trust and Forest & Bird member Val Clemens said only 0.01% of our native flora remains due to clearing for farms.

“There’s very, very little left.”

Clemens was a founding member of the trust, who began work on the reserve in 2007.

Restoration was given a boost in 2011 through the project Crimson Rugby World Cup funding initiative, Living Legends.

“Jock Ross was our living legend. He came to help plant the area. He was here earlier today actually with his family.”A row of mature kānuka, remnants of the original landscape, line the back of the planting paddock. They’ve been locked in place by a QEII trust covenant.

“The QEII area is protected in perpetuity, so it can never be touched.”

Smith said planting new trees has been a trial-and-error process over the last 16 years.

“We’ve learnt a lot. There have been a lot of casualties, but now [kāinga] is establishing itself in the original area.”

“It’s not like planting a forest in wet Auckland,” Smith said, “or the places along the West Coast, or the foothills, because we don’t have water.”

Smith said this was the last stage for this chapter of the reserve, and that it was time to consider next steps.

“Now it’s about trying to hand the reserve over to the council to look after.”

“We feel we’ve really achieved something here.”

By Anisha Satya