Tending Plants
Tyenna River Reserve Plants
Saturday 20 July 2019
Although it was a cool start, the day gradually warmed to make for pleasant conditions.
Initially the area on the north of Weir Road was targeted for removing tree guards on plants that had grown well above the top. Most fell into this category apart from a group put in by the Westerway school kids. These latter ones went in during 2016 whilst the bulk were from 2013/14, even so those we left with covers showed no sign of browsing.
After morning break, we focused on the west side of the river near the PWS workshop. The first batch, planted in 2014, were quite tall and again there was little sign of animal browsing. Getting the guards up and over the top of some of the plants was not always easy, due to the height they had reached.
However further along, in the area planted 2015, it was a different story. Here there was much evidence of browsing damage and we concentrated on doubling the guards by adding one above the other. This area is much drier, and we did wonder if the wallabies found this a preferable environment to the wetter sites.
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| Adding a second tree guard. The plants in this section have not grown as well as in the damper areas further north along the river reserve |
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| Plants taken from western end November 2015 |
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| The plastic film tree guards are not sufficient to keep off browsing and are also easily made ineffective by wallabies. These were replaced with black plastic variety as in the first photo above Photo from Trevor July 2019 |
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