Our Sustainability Journey at Warblers Retreat, Auckland

Sustainability, where do you start? It starts off with the small things. The first steps are being aware and conscious of how our inground habits and the choices we make can impact our environment. Constantly we are being told through the media that the earth can no longer sustain our reckless habits, and that if we don’t make some drastic changes, mankind will not have a planet to exist on.

This can create a sense of confusion and sometimes a feeling of hopelessness of not knowing where to start, or whether you are doing the right thing or not. It does not matter where any of us start our sustainability journey, it’s about our desire and our willingness to get on that continuum of change that really makes the difference. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s our story

For me, it all began when I was growing up as a child, on a farm in the ‘sticks’, in the back blocks of the Wairarapa. My parents always had huge vegetable gardens as there was a growing family of six to feed. Dad would bring the tractor in, and all the manure he could find to grow the biggest vegetables ever. Nothing went to waste, any scraps of food were given to the pig or to the chooks. This is how we were brought up. Nowadays it’s called sustainability, back then it was called survival!

My parent’s being farmers were very much DIY people, Mum sewed, baked, gardened, and could turn her hand to whatever was required at the time. Likewise, Dad was an innovator, he would always try to find a better way to do things, and he could fix almost anything. In those days, things were not disposed of readily – socks were mended, and machinery was fixed.

My parents were great role models. As kids we were encouraged to spend many hours playing outside on the farm, and we learnt very quickly not to say, “I’m bored”, or we would get a job to do! Probably the biggest reason we were ‘kicked outside to play’ by Mum, was because we lived in a small three-bedroom house. We spent hours playing Tarzan in the bush, cowboys and Indians in the hayshed, or careering down the hill in my brother’s homemade go-kart. We were footloose and carefree. It’s no wonder that sense of connection to nature, the outdoors and being aware of resourcefulness has remained with me.

As a grown up…

I was a teacher, a co-owner in a building company, a real estate salesperson, a landscaper and I am now a celebrant, an eco-celebrant! The values I grew up with have really stuck with me throughout the years and sustainability has travelled with me. I was the ‘Rubbish Lady’ at Gulf Harbour School where I introduced the compost bin and showed kids how to separate their waste, probably at a time when it was quite ‘uncool’, and most kids were not that engaged. A class project of making a huge paper mache compost heap for a science exhibition showed how obsessed I was with the whole thing. I went onto working with waste management from Council to create better ways of recycling on building sites, qualified as a green home assessor, created a Naturally Smarter Homes community assessment project and when in real estate became one of two qualified eco-brokers in NZ at the time. My tag line was - ‘down to earth real estate’ and everything I said or did had a green tinge to it! During this time I established a community group known as Sustainable Paremoremo, with the aim of inspiring and educating locals. We were acknowledged for our work by two sustainability awards from the Auckland Council. The group is still very active.

Following on from Sustainable Paremoremo

Or Sus Pare to the locals, I jumped ship, joined up with Dave and we became a team of landscapers – Dave with the hardscape knowledge, me with the softscape knowledge. Guess what we called ourselves? Sustainable Landscapes! Our tag line – ‘finding a better way’, and our slogan - We follow nature’s path by working with natural products and local resources to create beautiful landscapes.

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And this is what we did solidly for five to six years. We created landscapes for clients, and at the same time we were creating and constructing Warblers Retreat. It was relentless, seven days a week. Any resources we had – money or left-over materials were absorbed into the property. Quite a bit of our work was for the Auckland Council as Dave had previously had contracts with them. With contracts like this, there’s always waste materials. Waste not, want not – now as you wander around Warblers Retreat, you may recognize an old familiar looking ex-Council park seat, there’s old totara logs that were replaced from a playground in Torbay, rustic timber from the Browns Bay board walk, old kauri floorboards destined for firewood that were rescued from a client’s property, a sign and old wheel from my late brother’s place, old macrocarpa beams a client was removing, bamboo from the stand at the bottom of our bush, and so on. These are just some of the materials that have been reused and incorporated into the garden design. Dave has an incredible eye for something you can make use of, and he’s very good at doing it!

Dave had grown up in a similar environment to me

Although he was not on a farm, he had access to his Grandparents farm, and he grew up on the outskirts of Tuakau where he had the freedom to explore the outdoors at his leisure. He also came from a family of six, where there was a great need to be resourceful in order to comfortably survive. Dave learnt some great stonemason and brickwork skills from his father. His Mother too, was very creative, sewing clothes, gardening and painting. Dave and his three sisters were all encouraged to work with their hands, to make something out of nothing, and they’re all very good at it! Similarilary enough, Dave and his sisters learnt not to tell their Mother they were bored either as they too would get a job to do! Idle hands were never an option. This early moulding has proven very useful in times like our first covid 19 lockdown, when Dave had limited resources and plenty of time to complete the glamping area. Any nail he could straighten was straightened, and any length of twisted timber he had got moulded back into shape and reused.

Dave using upcycled macrocarpa beams

Dave remoulding the second hand beams for seating in the Canopy.

Being resourceful - Hard and soft landscaping materials

While hardscape materials were sourced from unwanted materials, the softscape side of our landscaping was also resourcefully acquired. Many of the plants at Warblers Retreat have been subdivided, or grown from cuttings. Throughout the years, my Mother – an avid gardener, was always giving away plants to others so I learnt how easy it was. I used to call myself a scrounge gardener, and still do. In my earlier days I would throw my kids into the car and take the trailer down to the racecourse to load up free straw and manure. It was also not uncommon to see me driving home with a car load of kids peaking between the trees and shrubs that I had bought at a local plant sale! Kids were also handy to help collect rocks from the side of the river for the garden, even something my brothers and I had to do years ago for my Mother and my Grandmother for their rock walls!

Responsibility for our natural surrounds

Being in touch with the outdoors for all those years has endeared a kind of respect, especially when in the native bush. At Warblers Retreat we are fortunate enough to be surrounded by it. By creating greater access to it, by way of walking tracks, it means we can share the beauty and the opportunity of being immersed in the ‘feel good’ properties of the bush. It takes you to another world, it’s where you can more easily connect with your soul, and even if you’re in the grumpiest mood, it can make you feel better!

One day, about a year ago, we spotted a couple of bags of rubbish that had been thrown into our bush. You can imagine how we felt – NOT HAPPY! Plastic, old bread and general rubbish, just biffed into our natural environment by an overseas guest who is so used to doing it in his country that it just seems normal for him to do it. Man-made plastic rubbish left lying in our bush, it’s so wrong. But this happens all the time – everywhere. This is one of the reasons we want to inspire others to think about how they dispose of their waste and show some respect for our environment.

New beginnings

When Dave and I first got together in 2012, we decided to leave Warblers Retreat which had been Dave’s home with his former partner for 15 years. We planned to travel around New Zealand doing landscaping for a living. We bought a large American caravan and decided we wanted to try living like nomads for a while. We both had an urge to purge! We lived in the caravan for a year, we never got off the North Shore as we had so much landscaping work to do. We had a great time learning how to live differently.

Learning to live with less stuff is quite empowering, ask anyone who has tried it. When you don’t have much room for ‘stuff’, you can’t gather ‘stuff’, which makes you ask, “do I really need this ‘stuff?’” We saved our grey water for watering our vegetables and herbs which we had growing in pots, and we lived a simple, easy and happy life for a year.

Back to Warblers Retreat in 2014

After a year the urge came to go back to the land, so we waited until the tenants had moved out of the Cottage at Warblers Retreat, and we moved in. That’s when we really started re-creating Warblers Retreat. Not only were we flat out doing the outdoor landscaping, but we were also working on the inside of the Cottage and then the Lodge, then came building of the Canopy and finally the glamping! The paintbrush didn’t stop, this is where Dave’s building skills came into their own. Not only has he got a creative eye and skillful hands, like my Dad, he can fix almost anything. This has saved us thousands of dollars in not having to employ tradies. Luckily, we have a sparky in the family along with a plumber who have helped along the way. Steve, our sparkie has been incredibly handy in helping and advising us of how to reduce our overall energy consumption. He has been replacing our incandescent lights to LEDs and providing us with useful information on how to get smarter with our heating and lighting. Keeping with the theme of being more resourceful, we furnished the interior of Warblers Retreat mainly by the use of Trade Me. It was a great place to look, as we had to start out with virtually no furniture. We got some good buys and had some fun along the way.

In the earlier years, Dave custom designed and had built a large 4x4 crane truck called Tatonka, to retrieve unwanted rock and boulders from paddocks. These rocks are a nuisance product for the farmers, however they are a natural element that will enhance any landscape design. There are many boulders and feature rocks in the Warblers Retreat gardens while the smaller rocks and stones have been used to create retainer walls as Warblers Retreat is sited on a slope. The retainer walls create the foundations for roughly an acre of fruit, vegetable and ornamental gardens. There’s three well established heritage apple trees grafted from obsolete local orchards through the Kai Rakau Project that was set up by Savanah Carter-Green. I was fortunate enough to be involved in this project in the early Sustainable Paremoremo years.

Our resident recyclers

Our Two legged recyclers

Using gravity and copious amounts of effort on behalf of our chooks, we pick up their hard work at the bottom of the chook run in the form of nutrient rich goodness for the garden!

Our chooks form a huge part of the recycling chain. They are our two-legged composters, they are incredible creatures, doing all the work for us, at the same time providing us with free range eggs. Using a bit of gravity, in the form of a hill, all the leftover food scraps and weeds they haven’t demolished, roll down the hill into a nice pile of goodness. The chooks dig over the mulch, poo and wee in it, and provide us with valuable compost for the garden. Our worms do the same thing in our two Hungry Bins and their pee is great for indoor or outdoor plants. After our chooks have finished their work of composting and laying, they go to a peaceful resting place under a nice fruit tree to continue the next cycle of life.

To ensure we save water and keep plants alive, we have used copious amounts of mulch on the gardens. Not only does this keep the weeds away, it helps keep plants alive during the hot summer months, saving water when it can get very dry. We lease a yard along the road where we get tree and bush trimmings dumped there by local arborists. When the mulch has rotted down a bit, we place it on our gardens.

We have a woodchipper on site so any tree trimmings on site are turned into mulch and placed into our huge composting bins Dave recently built. These also form part of our humanure system, whereby the sawdust and human excrement is buried in one of the compost chambers, and left for at least a year to hot compost. Turning the compost with our little digger makes light work of the process and the dark friable compost is then used on the fruit trees and ornamentals as a natural fertilser, just like in the olden days, but probably done in an easier and far more hygienic way!

Pest and weed control

Our European ancestors unknowingly brought so much destruction to our beautiful country – rats, mustelids, possums, gorse, endless invasive plants, the list goes on. Similarly, they cut down many of our native forests, milling the timber and sending it offshore. It feels as though our task now is to help restore some of the damage that has been done.

The land at Warblers Retreat was originally a podocarp forest with mature trees such as kauri, tanikaha, rimu and miro. Now there’s many wilding pines seeded throughout the property, there’s wild ginger, gorse, asparagus plant, you name it – we can find it growing here. We are doing our best to eradicate these pest plants, and to plant more native trees. We are fortunate in that the efforts of the late John Smith and now Gail & Warwick Stent, through Sustainable Paremoremo, annually supply us with a range of native trees.

A Ruru ( native owl or morepork), settled in for the day in our nectarine tree.

Rats are always a problem if we don’t do anything about them, especially as we have chooks. Sustainable Paremoremo, through the hard work of the late Derry McLauchlan, and now Martin Allen, provides us with a range of trapping and baiting options, along with valued support. Over the years this Pest free Pare initiative has helped us to eradicate most of the possums and to keep the rat numbers contained. This is really important as in Paremoremo, we form part of the north west wildlife link from the Waitakere Ranges through to the bird sanctuary island, Tiri tiri Matangi. As a kid, I grew up trapping possums, so this to me is second nature! If there’s a dead animal, it gets planted under a fruit tree – might as well make the most of the compost material, it sure beats buying blood and bone from Mitre 10 in a plastic wrapper!

Inspiring others

Wedding Kauri Tree

Marrying couples staying overnight at Warblers Retreat get to plant their own kauri tree.

When we set up Warblers Retreat as a place to come and stay, we really wanted to share our appreciation of the natural environment and to inspire and educate others to think about the effects of their actions on the environment. Having been a teacher for years, it was mandatory that the cottage, studio, lodge and glamping were well kitted out in information about our natural environment. I wanted them to be aware of the other native residents of whom we share our space with, the native trees and shrubs we are surrounded by, and how we do things at Warblers Retreat. Our weddings are designed for minimal impact – flowers and foliage from the property are used, food leftovers are taken home or scraps are fed to the chooks, a kauri tree is planted by marrying couples who stay overnight, or a native tree is planted for every wedding held here.

awareness

Being conscious of our environmental footprint is the most important aspect of bringing about change. There’s so much more we can do; we haven’t really even started yet. We are using the toitu carbon footprint assessment tool and have a plan to decrease our energy consumption and to work on future environmental initiatives. As our planet is facing the devastating effects of climate change, we all need to be mindful of how we use our resources, at a personal level. We believe a critical question we should all be making when purchasing items is... what is the full lifecycle of that item, and can it be reused? How are our daily decisions affecting the world around us? We can make a difference, and we need to, because it’s our grandchildren and great grandchildren who will bear the results of our actions. Here’s my favourite quote from way back: Treat the earth well; it was not given to us by our parents, it was loaned to us by our children.

Ultimately it would be great to operate at Warblers Retreat without the use of any fossil fuels, like my cousin Mike Casey who is the founder of NZ0.com and forestlodge.nz. Mike, along with his wife Rebecca, have established the first fossil fuel free orchard in New Zealand. New Zealand Zero was born from a desire, and need, to eliminate fossil fuel used in the growing and harvesting of produce. They are currently in the USA looking to bring the first electric tractor into New Zealand.

Why are they doing this? Because the use of fossil fuels is heating up the atmosphere on our planet, causing the glaciers to melt, the seas to rise and causing massive erosion of our foreshores throughout the world, and that’s just a start. You may have noticed our summers are becoming hotter and longer. We know for sure, we are witnessing, many plants confused as to what season it is, and some hardy varieties aren’t even surviving our increasingly drawn-out summers at Warblers Retreat.

So, our next steps are... Dream Big! Again!

We can all make a difference. The biggest attribute we need is the desire and the commitment to carry out what we dream of. Add to that a lot of hard work, skill, and a willingness to learn new ways. With the creation of Warblers Retreat under our belt, now is the time for us to focus on innovation and refinement. As we are inspired by other family members, we relish the idea of ‘finding a better way to do things’ on the next step of our sustainability journey, and we are more than happy to share.

We are proud to have achieved Tourism’s Gold Sustainability Award since our inception. Obtaining this award encourages us to continue to try our best to do our utmost in the next stages of our sustainability journey.