Pest plants, such as wild ginger and moth plant, are invading Auckland’s North Shore – your gardens and your nearby bush reserves. Controlling them when they are small is easy and cheap. If they are left to grow, they can spread across your property onto your neighbours’ gardens and to nearby reserves.
Auckland Council has recently introduced new rules that require people in some areas to remove some pest plants from their property, in order to protect our native biodiversity.
Wild ginger, also known as Kahili ginger, grows up to two metres tall with large wax-covered leaves. It forms dense, long-lived clumps that shade out the understorey and prevent growth of native seedlings and forest regeneration. It has red and yellow flowers that can produce hundreds of seeds.
Take action as soon as possible:
There are several environmental networks across Auckland’s North Shore that support communities to recognise, report and remove pest plants and restore our native wildlife.
This Pest Plant of the Month feature is a collaborative initiative between Restore Hibiscus & Bays, Pest Free Kaipātiki Restoration Society, Pupuke Birdsong Project, Restoring Takarunga Hauraki, the Upper Harbour Ecological Network and Kaipātiki Project. Building on Te Ao Māori principles of kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga, these environmental networks bring our communities together to foster guardianship, care and respect towards our whenua, natural world and indigenous wildlife.