Community
Groundwork Associates is proud to be associated with community initiatives.
Seeley Gully Friends
Seeley Gully Friends is an informal network of people, most of whom live locally, who treasure a special gully gifted to the people of Hamilton by the doctor who looked after it for nearly 60 years – Dr. Alwyn J. Seeley.
The Friends of the A.J. Seeley Gully Reserve Trust was established to support the group’s regular working bees, planting days and other activities to protect and enhance the gully’s native biodiversity. The Trust is a registered charity and can accept tax-deductible donations.
Hamilton City Council are the primary carers for the gully and a network of volunteers do a range of additional work to enhance restoration efforts. A significant donation from the Seeley family will be used for additional trees and restoration work in the gully.
Volunteers are always welcome. To find out what’s happening with the restoration and for future events, visit their Facebook page
The New Zealand Tree Project
The aim of the project is to bring New Zealand’s forest wonders to a wide audience and give everyone a taste of the beauty and majesty that can be experienced in our own native bush.
A huge portrait of a 41 metre-tall rimu tree is the centrepiece of the NZ Tree Project. This spectacular tree lives in the dense temperate rainforest of Pureora Forest, near Lake Taupō in the central North Island. It is usually impossible to see or photograph an entire forest tree because they tower so far above us and are surrounded by a dense understorey of smaller trees. This presented a tantalising challenge to the NZ Tree Project team who set out in late 2014 to find the perfect subject for their tree portrait.
The project team chose Pureora because it is known to have an unusual density of very large podocarp trees and after many days of searching they found a stunning rimu that was completely visible through a tree-fall clearing. Over 4 weeks the team worked with a specially designed camera rig suspended from the canopy to photograph this magnificent tree thousands and thousands of times. The huge portrait was created by carefully blending the finest 65 images from the larger photo collection.
Wilderness Photography - John Leathwick
The breathtaking images by Hamilton photographer, John Leathwick, are a celebration of some of New Zealand’s captivating and environmentally important vistas.
Photography has been an enduring feature of John Leathwick’s life, ever since he was given his first camera, a Brownie Starlet, at around the age of 10. It was this simple film camera, equipped with a borrowed flash and close-up lens, that he used to take his first ever ‘wildlife photo’ – of a blackbird nest he discovered in the hydrangea bushes behind the school dental clinic.
John has a life-long passion for the outdoors; he worked as an ecologist studying New Zealand’s outdoor world for 35 years, first with the Forest Research Institute and then Landcare Research, followed by periods of several years each at NIWA and DOC.
He left full-time science work in 2014 to pursue other things, including photography, and consultancy work for various organisations in New Zealand and overseas.
This small collection of prints were taken on recent trips into some of John’s favourite wild places. For more examples of John’s work, visit his blog: JohnLeathwick.wordpress.com