The Landing has been many things to many people over the last thousand years: a place to forge a new life; a home; a natural resource; a trading post; a vacation retreat; a workplace, and a venue for celebration. Today, above all else, we see it as a place where many unique and significant aspects of New Zealand’s cultural and biological heritage can be preserved, protected and nurtured.
At this stage, most of The Landing’s sustainability programme – which includes measuring our carbon emissions, sustainable winegrowing, reducing waste, caring for our team and wider community and managing our property responsibly – is well embedded and a matter of business as usual. Our way of working is patient, with successes building slowly over time.
After two decades of continuing reforestation and predator control work, for example, it’s gratifying to see the native birdlife here truly flourishing. Our population of kiwi has become known as one of the most abundant in the country, and in March, for the second time, we were honoured to be the release site for a group of rare pāteke (brown teal ducks) from the Department of Conservation’s breeding programme.
Recently, we have also noticed uncommon migratory birds visiting our shores and wetlands. In part this is a consequence of there now being rich native habitat available for them. It’s rewarding to know we are preserving Aotearoa’s unique natural heritage for the future, and we hope our guests’ visits are also enriched by the chance to encounter rare native wildlife. An interview on p.28 with Andrew Mentor from Kiwi Coast takes us through the long-term collaborative effort behind great outcomes like this.
Long-term collaborative effort is also behind the success of Rugby for Life, a social support organisation we’re proud to have worked with since its inception in 2018. You can read about Rugby For Life’s work in our interview with founder – and a good friend of The Landing – Riki Kinnaird on p.39. The wider outcomes RFL achieves, which have little or nothing to do with rugby, are good illustrations of the multifaceted benefits our sustainability programme is designed to support and achieve. Behind it all, the patient and consistent work of our own team is the driving force in this gradual accumulation of success. Every day our team members are out planning, planting, weeding, growing, pruning, harvesting, building, repairing, cleaning, hosting and collaborating with others, through good seasons like the mild calm winter we enjoyed in 2023, or the challenging ones like the summer of heavy storms and damaging winds that started the 2023 year.
