The “rockery” at the Waikanae Station is starting to look greener. They are just weeds, but weeds aren’t necessarily unattractive — it depends on what they are.
The Keep New Zealand Beautiful organisation has given its Most Beautiful Large Town (5,000 – 20,000 residents) award for this year to Waikanae.
Local resident Norma McCallum, who has been the mainstay of Keep Waikanae Beautiful, entered Waikanae in the Beautiful Towns and Cities Award spending weeks putting together a portfolio of everything that makes our town special, and she heard on Thursday afternoon that Waikanae had won!
Norma was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for Services to the Community in June.
The award reflects the passion that many Waikanae citizens have for gardening, and the many large leafy trees in the town. They received a slap in the face with the Dougherty & Rowan water meters, but most won’t let that deter them.
Of course, there are several parts of the town that are council land/property, and Norma has urged the WCB members for several years to improve them, with limited success. We added our voice to hers in the two by-election campaigns this year, and the result was the planting of the southern entrance to the town, as detailed in an earlier post.
But there are several more places where action is still needed, some of which have been the subject of earlier posts on here.