Greening Taupō Day 2024 was an incredible day! The Arbor Day Planting Event was a big success with over 2000 people coming along to help plant 3000 trees as part of a native tree corridor into town. About fifty organisations and businesses from all around the North Island provided free educational activities for the tamariki. It really was a festival of environmental education for the town!

Thirty three schools and kindergartens took part in celebrations and activities at their schools/centres and held dress-in-green fundraising days. All of the work that is done by Greening Taupō and Kids Greening Taupō, including the resources they share, are provided free of charge to the community, so this was a chance for people to show their support and to give back.

There were great prizes for schools that took part, thanks to Contact Energy and Mitre 10 MEGA Taupō. Thousands of students also took part in a town-wide art competition run by Huka Honey Hive, Quality Print, and Donovan Bixley. Learn more about the Greening Taupō Day 2024 planting event, and school and art competition entries below. You can find more information on this years competition entrants and winners here.

Arbor Day Planting

This involved over 2000 members of the community planting 3000 native trees alongside Tauhara Road at the Taupō Golf Club.

The trees were provided by Tūaropaki Native Plant Nursery and Trees that Count. The Department of Conservation, Taupō Golf Club and some amazing volunteers helped to prepare the site, including creating all 3000 holes. Students from Mountview School, Taupō Intermediate and Tauhara College helped lay out the plants and put fertiliser tablets in the holes.

Through an incredible collaborative effort, sustainable kai for the day was provided free to all attendees through largely donated sources. Mātanga Projects Ltd cooked up 1500 venison sausages provided by Epro from deer hunted by their staff. Jude from The Bistro used an incredible 150 kgs of rescued vegetables provided by Misfit Garden to create 600 cups of soup, served with a bun from Pak’n Save Taupō. Mynoke, an industrial scale worm farm, took the paper cups to feed the worms while also providing nutritious vermicast for the trees!

Hundreds of children arrived on buses funded by Tenon Clearwood LP, Camex Civil, Mātanga Projects Ltd and First Credit Union. While Simple Traffic Management kept everyone safe crossing the busy road.

Along with planting and mulching, there was a huge range of interactive activities provided by over fifty exhibitors and community groups. There were representatives from community organisations such as Department of Conservation, Taupō District Council, Waikato Regional Council, Taupō Fire Brigade, Life Education, Blue Light, Mynoke, Waikato Enviroschools, Forest and Bird, Save the Kiwi, Predator Free Taupō, and Contact Energy running activities for the children who came along. This year we had organisations travelling from all over the Central North Island such as Wingspan Birds of Prey Trust, Wildbase, Wood is Good, Sanctuary Mountain, and Moths & Butterflies Trust NZ to provide environmental education opportunities - all to the background tunes of DJ Alexi furthermore adding to the festival atmosphere.

Korio Website Design & Digital Marketing and Quality Print also donated lots of time and resources to make the event a success.

Schools and ECE centres that were unable to attend the event still got into the spirit of Greening Taupō Day by dressing in green, taking part in conservation activities and planting trees at their own education centres.