As we flip our calendars over to September, we know two things: top up your antihistamine prescription and get ready for asparagus season, spring is here. The best bit? Summer is only three months away... Yet, we still find ourselves reminiscing about the summer past and the fun we had on the Cheers Tour.
The Cheers Tour saw us travelling around the North Island for eight weeks. We gave out coffees, visited customers and got to visit some pretty special spots (if you haven’t been to the Te Waihou Walkway, you’re sleeping). We also had that rather large spinning wheel, which saw us dishing our prizes from Whittaker’s, Fix & Fogg & Graze. In our eyes, the jackpot was the donations toTrees That Count — to everyone who “won” a donation, you helped us raise $2,500. This translates to 311 trees. And recently, we got to plant these trees.
A couple of weekends back, a few of the Wellington team headed out to Makara Valley, where they met with the Makaracarpas — a community group who work to improve water quality and biodiversity in the rural catchment west of Wellington. Armed with fresh enthusiasm and coffee and bacon and egg pie (nice one, Amelia), our team joined a few other locals, wielding spades and bamboo stakes to get a grand total of 600+ trees into the ground.
The plot of land that we were planting on, runs along the stream in the Makara valley and is being reverted back to forestlands, after years of serving as both farmland and a golf course. The new owners of the land are keen to help restore the natural diversity, provide green corridors for bird life, and improve water quality that feeds the estery down stream. All of which we think is pretty neat.
It was super rewarding work, and we’re looking forward to driving through the valley in the years to come and being able to say ‘yeah, I planted those trees’. A massive cheers to Trees That Count, the work that do is amazing and we’re looking forward to working more with them in the future to see more trees planted around our beautiful country.
