Love Your Path - Free!
St Johns to Glen Innes Shared Path
In 2024 a team from Bike Eastern Suburbs got together to help tidy up the neglected St Johns to Glen Innes shared path.
It has since become a regular event with people turning up at 9am on the second Tuesday of every month for a couple of hours’ work. They weed, mulch, sweep, collect litter and plant seedlings from the volunteers’ gardens.
While it is predominantly native plantings, a highlight every year has been the sunflower patch which rewards the people who have come up the hill from Glen Innes.
About 800m down the hill, close to the train station path, there’s a small orchard of fruit trees planted last year as a team-building exercise for a local business. However, at its current stage of development, most of the plantings of interest are in the top 100 metres of the path.
Access:
From top of trail near the intersection with St Heliers Bay Rd. Parking is available at Sunhill: 317 St Johns Rd.
Themes
Wildlife, wellbeing
Watering stations have been placed near the recent plantings to help keep them from drying out over summer. It’s a popular pastime for local children to help water the sunflowers.
The working bees are community efforts with people doing what they feel most comfortable with. Some like to weed, others like to prune back plants or shovel mulch. Children are given chalk to draw on the path and ice blocks are handed out during summer. Thanks to Bike Auckland for the original idea, the Ōrākei Local Board for funding the tools and trailer, and the Auckland East Community Network for the grant to purchase native tussocks from the Ngāti Whātua Pourewa Nursery.
