150+ plants in the ground and something BIG to share

This is our second newsletter since relaunching, and there's been a lot happening since then! Between May and July we've had our heads down: planting, filming, and building something behind the scenes we're excited to finally share.

💪 What We've Been Up To

First, the roof on the containers is now done! If you've been following along, you'll know we mentioned it last time as a milestone.

We've now put a full video together showing how it came together (click the image above to watch). Worth a looksie if you want to see what a roof over two shipping containers actually looks like in practice.

On the planting front: we've had four serious sessions out on the land since May, and the numbers have added up faster than we expected.

24 May: 14 Hedycarya arborea, 2 Beilschmiedia tawa, 6 lemons -> a mix of canopy-species natives and the beginnings of our food forest edge.

13 June: 44 Veronica spp, 4 Pseudopanax arboreus, 1 Kahikatea, 1 Totara, 3 Dodoneae viscosa, 1 Karaka, 1 Ngaio, 2 Poa cita -> this was the biggest single session yet, and hence the one that took the longest!

12 July: 3 daylily, 2 Poa cita, 8 lancewood, 3 Libertia sp., 5 Griselinia, 1 fern, 16 currants, 1 Podocarpus nivalis, 2 mountain pawpaw, 2 tomatillo, 1 Coprosma crassifolia, 1 Corokia sp. -> Rounding out the mix with more food plants and ground cover species.

19 July: 7 grafted apples; of two varieties: Monty’s surprise & Sunrise, 2 additional daylillies, 1 Veronica sp., 18 black currant, 1 Apple Monty’s surprise (mother tree), 1 Apple sunrise (mother tree), 3 citrus (grown from seed).
I grafted the apples myself, which is somewhat easy to do...I’ve got a video down below to see the process if you’re interested.

That's well over 150 plants in the ground across ten weeks. Winter planting is deliberate: dormant plants put energy into root establishment rather than leaf growth, and the cooler, wetter conditions do a lot of the aftercare work for you.

Behind the scenes, we've also been working on something we've wanted to build for a while, and it's now live!

🌿 Membership is open

We've launched a paid membership for people who want to follow the project more closely. The youtube videos and free newsletter stay free, you'll always get the core updates there.

But membership gets you involved more deeply: behind-the-scenes content, extended videos, and the details that doesn't fit in a monthly email.

For example, members this month get access to a video of Xander grafting apple trees on the property. Hands-on, unscripted, and the kind of thing we'd never put on the public YouTube channel.

A line worth sitting with

"It takes a village to restore a forest." — after Wangari Maathai

Thanks heaps for being here. Whether you've been following along for a while, or just joined us, whether you become a member or not, it’s great to have you along for this adventure of a lifetime! It means a lot.

With ❤️,

Danique & Xander

p.s. Questions about membership? Just hit reply via email or in the comments, we’re happy to clarify anything we might have missed explaining in here.

If you're a member, here's the deeper look we promised. 👇