The totara were planted by KRB members last Friday morning along the Milton Avenue footpath, next to the North Canterbury Riding For The Disabled property.
They were included in a row of 14 totara planted at the site.
The other seven trees were planted to replace ones removed to accommodate the new Loburn sewer main. Members of the Waimakariri District Council greenspace team also helped plant the trees.
Ron, who turns 90 next month, and his wife, Barbara, have volunteered for KRB for ‘‘30-plus’’ years.
They estimate they have helped KRB members to plant more than 14,000 trees and shrubs inthe Rangiora district.
It is a legacy for the couple, who both enjoy gardening and are also life members of Keep New Zealand Beautiful (KNZB).
Keep Rangiora Beautiful was established in 1989. The group’s first big project was to enhance the informal picnic area by the Ashley/Rakahuri River bridge in Rangiora.
The plantings provided shade and wind protection for the area, which quickly became a popular picnic site and remains so today.
There have been many beautification projects since then including the Adopt A Highway Trial in 1994, Dudley Park in 1995, BNZ car park in 1996, Kaiapoi Lakes and Taggart’s Shingle Pit in 1997, Good Street Reserve in 1998, Rangiora Hospital in 2000, Bin Inn and Warehouse Rangiora in 2002, Mike Kean Walkway in 2008, Rangiora High School fence line and East Belt frontage, in 2009 and Rangiora Health Hub in 2015, to name just a few.
The group also ran a successful recycling programme during the 1990s after Ron and Doug Ensor had the idea of recycling newspapers to raise money to buy trees.
‘‘Many people had piles of newspapers stacked in their garages so it wasn’t long before we were inundated with them,’’ Ron says.
He founded Christchurch business Coleridge Paper Company to buy the bundles of newspapers ‘‘stacked to eyebrow level in pallets’’.
Each pallet stack weighed one tonne and was wrapped in waterproof paper then trucked to Christchurch, fetching $1000 per month for KRB.
A former deputy principal of Rangiora High School and a talented artist, Ron says he and Barbara have ‘‘all but retired’’ from the KRB group now.
But the volunteer work they have done with the many friends they have made over the years has been a lot of fun.
By Shelley Topp
