Tōtara park:

On Tuesday,July 30th, 2024, the Kāhu hāpori went to Totara Park to gain an understanding of Kaitiakitanga (gardians of the environment). This trip helped us identify the different species of biodiversity. Our main focus of this semester is taking care of the sea, also known as the galexSEA. We have gained so much knowledge about the different examples of biodiversity by using an AI (artificial intelligence) tool called Seek. This AI helped us visualise what species we are looking at.

My trip to Totara Park helped me learn a lot about the different examples of biodiversity but of-course, there are always pros and cons to an adventure. The positive side was, that the trip very learned and helped me learn a lot about a healthy and unhealthy environment, the negative side was that the hills were quite steep and slippery due to the rain in the morning because of which I fractured my wrist 🙄.

Botanic Gardens:

The trip to Botanic gardens was very similar to Totara Park. We learnt about the different flowers and how the puhinui stream is connected between Totara Park and Botanic garden, and we kept exploring kaitiakitanga in a man made environment.

The trip to Botanic gardens wasn’t nearly as tiring as Totara Park as there were no slopes. We commenced our trip by doing an alphabetical scavenger hunt in our assigned groups where we have to find 26 (all the letters in the alphabet) diverse plants starting with each of the letter in the alphabet. For the next half of the trip, we had a walk through the ponds understanding how storm water is collected.

What is the difference between Totara Park and Botanic Gardens:

The main difference between Totara Park and Botanic Gardens is that Totara Park is natural, whereas Botanic Gardens is man made. Totara Park’s rivers weren’t as clean as Botanic Gardens,  Botanic gardens has sculptures but Totara Park dosent and Botanic Gardens is mainly based on flowers and other diverse plants not gust from New Zealand, whereas Totara park is a wild life forrest and has more native plants.

What are the similarities between Totara Park and botanic gardens:

The similarities between Totara Park and botanic gardens is that they are both a healthy environment, we know that because there are different biodiverse plants and have different sizes or ages. They are also both preserved by the government which means it is gouvernement’s property so people are not allowed to cut trees and are allowed to have a stroll.

How does this relate to our semester theme, Kaitiakitanga:

Our two trips relate to our semester theme, kaitiakitanga as we looked at the difference between natural and man made environments. This also helped us gain an understanding about the galexSEA so that we can make our environment more healthy. We can make our environment more healthy by throwing our rubbish in the bins, recycle, plant trees, etc.

By: Jaslyn Chawla

.