When local businesses come together, good things grow
Photo credit: Michael Farr
There is something progressive happening around Irongate.
Irongate is home to a mix of businesses, contractors and service providers that play an important role in Hawkes Bay's economy. These businesses are part of our catchment too. Their people live here, work here, and share the roads, parks and landscapes around Te Karamū, every day.
The thinking behind the Collective is to bring some of that connection into the way businesses contribute to their local environment. Rather than a business supporting a planting project on its own, the Collective brings businesses together to share funding, expertise, time and resources. This brings a healthier mix of capacity into a project and more opportunity to do more enduring projects that might be difficult for one business to achieve alone.
Photo credit: Michael Farr
Starting with the Irongate Stream
The first project is now in the ground. Teams from our foundation members HB Homes, TUMU Group and Lattey Construction in partnership with Karamū River Catchment Collective came together to plant more than 1700 native plants alongside the Irongate Stream at Riverslea Road.
There was something pretty special about seeing people who spend their days building houses and bridges, running businesses and working across the region getting their hands in the dirt and putting locally grown plants in the ground. The planting will create habitat, strengthen the stream margin and contribute to the health of the waterway as the plants grow. But perhaps more importantly, it has given the Collective a place to begin.
What comes next
The Irongate Stream planting is the first step in what we hope will become a long term partnership. There are plenty of opportunities ahead. Ongoing riparian restoration and biodiversity projects, stormwater and runoff management, additional planting and environmental improvements around business sites and shared industrial spaces could all form part of the Collective's future.
Exactly what comes next will be decided by the businesses involved and the opportunities they see around them.
That's what we like about this model. The Collective is being built by the businesses themselves, with a shared interest in caring for the place where they work.
The foundation members HB Homes, TUMU Group, Lattey Construction and the Evergreen Foundation have helped get it moving. We hope more businesses will join them as the Collective grows.
Photo credit: Michael Farr
A shared landscape
For us, the Irongate Collective is also a good example of the connections that run through Te Karamū. Industry sits alongside orchards, farms, waterways and communities. The health of each is connected to the others. A strong regional economy needs healthy landscapes and communities, and healthy landscapes benefit from people and businesses choosing to invest in natural capital. We think the Irongate Collective is an inspiring example of what that can look like. The first 1,700 plants are already in the ground. Now we're looking forward to seeing what grows from there
Photo credit: Michael Farr
