Greening Taupō Day 2025
Greening Taupō Day 2025: A Celebration of Community, Conservation & Collaboration
What an incredible day! Greening Taupō Day 2025 saw hundreds of volunteers give their time to help create an unforgettable event for thousands of attendees — all brought together by a shared commitment to protecting, learning about, and celebrating our natural environment. The day was filled with free, hands-on environmental education experiences, all made possible by the passion, generosity, and hard work of our incredible community.
This event wouldn’t have been possible without Contact Energy – our major sponsor for funding the essential running costs of the event. Mitre 10 MEGA Taupō sponsored all of the gloves and tools needed for the day and were there with a fun game and incredible prizes.
A very special shout out to Epro Ltd — who not only helped save the ngahere by hunting 16 invasive deer, but also turned them into delicious sausages for our event. Feeding the attendees, supporting conservation, and fundraising for community efforts all in one go — we are beyond grateful for your contribution and the incredible effort that went into it. Thank you also to Mitre 10 MEGA Taupō and Blue Light Taupō for the BBQs. Last but not least, a huge thanks to Misfit Garden for contributing a staggering 150kg of veggies, and to Jude from The Bistro for turning this local, sustainable produce into soup for the attendees. It took Jude 8 hours to peel all those vegetables and make the soup! Pak’n Save Taupō donated the buns and Mynoke donated the cups that could be fed to their worms after the event!
Greening Taupō had site prep underway many months ago and this turned into full throttle action in the lead-up to planting day! Thanks to the incredible mahi of the Taupō/Tūrangi DOC crew—along with Hutch, Andrew, and Aaron—they powered through rain and shine to prep the site and auger 3,000 holes.
The always-awesome Wicked Weeders teamed up with DOC to lay out all 3,000 native plants, adding generous scoops of nutrient-rich vermicast from MyNoke (delivered by Double H2Go & Double H Haulage) into each hole to give the seedlings a strong start. Taupō District Council also came through with truckloads of mulch to help retain moisture and protect the young plants.
The plants were grown from eco-sourced local seed at Tongariro Corrections and were made possible thanks to generous funding from Trees That Count, Contact Energy, and Hukafalls Jet, Lake Taupō.
Other amazing volunteers on the day were local legends who signed up (or found themselves in a high vis vest on the day!) to help with parking, traffic management, registration, planting, marquee wrangling and everything in between — we could not have done it without them!
Over 50 organisations and businesses offered an incredible array of engaging, educational activities for tamariki and whānau. Some travelled from as far as Auckland, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Hawke’s Bay, and Rotorua to be part of the event. It really has become a festival of environmental education for the North Island! Thanks so much to Bevan from Total Sport, who set up gazebos and tables for those who needed them and created our site map below.
Check out how many organisations joined us on the day to provide free fun environmental education!
We also received many more in-kind donations for Greening Taupō Day from generous businesses, Eftpos machines from Tech Central, hand washing station from Quality Print, radios from Mobicomm, water station from Double H2Go, generator from Taupō Generators, and sound system from Taupō District Council.
DJ Alexi from Kefi Cafe provided the atmosphere with his awesome music, and the mystery dancing unicorn appeared again to delight the crowd!
Funding from Tenon Clearwood Ltd, Camex Civil, First Credit Union, Tranzit and Matanga Projects for buses for students to get to the event made the event much more accessible for the tamariki from 30 local schools and ECE centres that came along.
As a small token of our appreciation, we hosted a shared meal at the end of the day, so our volunteers and stall holders could have some kai before heading home. That food was made possible thanks to generous donations and sponsorships from our amazing local businesses, including: Miraka Limited, Suncourt Indian Taupō, The Garden Cafe, Misfit Garden, The Bistro, Bubu Coffee Roasters and The Cozy Corner Taupō.
