Despite such interesting times the Environment Group continues to thrive.

With membership now at 175 students we are able to do a great deal of productive work. The very dry conditions at the beginning of the year posed serious challenges for our 2019 plantings and we worked hard with mulch and water to get our precious native trees through the summer. Having survived the drought we then ran into problems with some unfortunate damage to our little forest from community use. For some, the forest during the lock down, became a favorite haunt for biking and sadly trees were cut down to form tracks and other plants were crushed and broken as the paths were widened. We love local children to enjoy the forest but we would love them to show some respect for the hard work done by the Burnside students who have worked tirelessly for ten years to create our native forest.

The Christchurch City Council has very kindly provided us with over 200 native plants to continue our work in Jellie Park. It is hoped that by the end of Term 2 we will have got these into the ground and will have added to the work done in the park last year. We are heading for the sea!

The Environment Group meets each week and new members are always welcome. We now have students in Years 9-11 achieving ten weeks of service and gaining their Environment Leaders badge. The Year 13 students are gaining valuable service hours for their graduation certificates of service and some members are using the hours for their Duke of Edinburgh/ Hillary Award. If you are interested in joining please contact Mr Land or meet on the upper fields by the bike stands on a Wednesday afternoon at 2.35.

A very big thank you to our hard working members and to the many staff who help with the group each week.