Written by Gus C, Sam O, Luca S, Doris L, Monica X, Laura V, Jaimee L, Lilah S, Georgia C and Oliver B

Kia ora, we are the Te Ara Maurea Roydvale School Reporters. We are super excited to share with you that we are working in collaboration with the Christchurch City Council. We have been cooperating with the Christchurch City Council and we are helping them make Juniper Place Reserve a more welcoming place. We will be collaborating with the Council and will hopefully be planting some native trees in Juniper Place Reserve. We had our first meeting with Sam, Karen and Toby from the Council on the 5th of April. Read on to learn more about this.

How did we team up?

Well it all started with one single email from the Council that was sent to our principal Miss Washington. In that email there was a plan to grow more trees for our environment and to have more shade for people in Juniper Place Reserve. The Council wants to increase the tree percentage by 54%. Miss Washington was a bit too busy so she sent it to Mrs Johnstone and the School Reporters. Mrs Johnstone read the email and asked if any reporters were interested in helping and working with the Council. It is so important for us to help plant new growth around our school so a group was formed quickly. Once our group was formed, we looked at the consultation plan and emailed Karen from the Council back saying we were intrigued and wanted to help. We emailed Karen a few times and then organised a meeting at our kura.

The Meeting.

On the 5th of April we went to the meeting with the Council. We first introduced ourselves and then talked about our kura/school. We talked about what the school reporters do, who the Juniper reporters are, about our school logo and our school values. We also discussed different native plants and trees that we thought would fit there.

We planned how to use the space to make everyone happy with the new arrangements of the park. We told them we would like to plant flax, cabbage trees and tussocks. We wanted to plant tussocks because our school name, Te Ara Maurea, means the tussock lined pathway. Toby is an arborist and he told us what plants we could potentially use and what plants wouldn’t grow. It was a great meeting and a really mīharo experience.

We will continue to talk to the City Council and discuss our plans which will eventually lead to actually planting the trees in Juniper Place. They will hopefully grow and live a healthy life.

Three reporters are going to speak to the City Council at a public meeting in June about Juniper Place. Check in on our school pānui or Hero to keep updated on our journey.

We would like to give a big shout out to the City Council and in particular; Sam, Karen and Toby, for listening to our input and considering our ideas. We are very excited to continue this amazing opportunity.

Thank you for reading and we will see you in the next article!

From the Juniper Place Reporters