Mānawatia Matariki! Happy Matariki!

This year at Rural Design we celebrated Matariki (albeit a little late) with a mid winter hāngi. Our mid winter feast is a celebration of Matariki and also a chance to celebrate and thank our field team and nursery crew for the hard work they are putting in every day in the cold wintery weather. Its our version of a mid winter pick me up.

Winter Mahi

This winter our field crews have been pushed hard on some very challenging terrain and large planting Jobs – particularly in our backyard of Northland.

The Nursery crew have produced and dispatched more plants than ever before and have made use of our new nursery pads, shade houses and Glass houses. 2021 resulted in more than 1.5 million trees being produced in our Nursery.

So it only felt right to take stock, sit down together and celebrate each other as well as Matariki.

For the uninitiated, Matariki is a star cluster (known as pleides) that rises in winter (in June/July) and marks the Māori New Year. Traditionally, it was a time to give thanks to the environment, pay your respects to those that have passed away in the year, set your intentions for the year to come and spend time together as a whānau.

For us at Rural Design, we used it as a time to say thankyou to each other for the hard mahi that we are all putting in, spent time together and enjoyed a big feed (and a beer or two!), and it also marked the half way point of the planting season.

A big shoutout goes to Mike and Zane  (the Hangi masters), Noeline (Our Chef), Ethan and Tess for their help in the Kitchen, and Heath for all the meat.