Planting NZ Passion vines with Kereru Discovery

On Tuesday 9th of June, fourteen members of the Khandallah School Garden Gang participated in a working lunch as part of an ongoing initiative between The Kereru Discovery and the school.

With Mount Kau Kau’s Khandallah Park at the ‘back door’ of the school, the initiative aims to involve children in the conservation of our native wood pigeon, the Kereru, whose habitat we share.

The children planted over 50 Kohia (New Zealand Passionfruit Vine) with guidance from Tony Stoddard and Amber Bill from Kereru Discovery (WWF) and Wellington City Council respectively.

Some of the vines had been grown and cared for by the Garden Gang.

 The children learnt that the Kohia plant is a native vine and a vigorous climber that wraps itself around other trees’ trunks and branches as it makes its way up to the treetop canopy. It has small white flowers in spring then orange fruit in autumn that native birds, including the Kereru, like to feed on. The sap of the tree was used to make a kind of chewing gum by the Maori and as well as eating the fruit, Maori extracted the fragrant oil to use as body oil.

Check out our Kereru drawings on the 'Kereru Drawings' Page tab.

Khandallah School helping with The Kereru DiscoveryProject

Last November 2014 the school got involved with the Kereru Discovery Project.

A stall was set up at the school fair where people could pot up a native plant seed  for a gold coin donation. The pots were labelled with the names of those who had 'sponsored' each plant.

This news was published in The Wellingtonian on November 6th 2014

The good people at the  Kereru Discovery Project make it their job to look after our beautiful native Kereru for future generations to enjoy.

Want to find out more about what they do? Want to get involved?

Be sure to check out their website and blog.


You'll see there's plenty we can do and it doesn't necessarily take a huge effort, like  counting and recording the Kereru in your back yard, or planting native trees that Kereru like to feed...or simply spreading awareness of what's going on.

At Garden Gang we're learning more about what can be done and have been looking after the Kereru Project seedlings in our school grounds for future planting in Khandallah Park.

We'll have flowers in Spring

We planted a mixed bag of flower bulbs on Tuesday 26th May.

These came in all different shapes and sizes.

                        We're hoping for more                                          colour in our boxes and borders.

Come spring, we'll get a lovely surprise!


We also planted some dwarf daffodils!