Over the years we have undertaken many repairs on almost anything that didn’t move. Due to budgetary restraints or difficulty to get people out to the reserve many things got fixed. Here are a few examples worth mentioning.
We replaced the plastic sheeting in the nursery a number of times using the funds the annual plant sale generated.
The sprinkler system has been a source of continual maintenance. If it wasn’t someone putting a spade through a pipe, a malfunctioning sprinkler head or a leaking pump it was fixed. One of the highlights of our tenure was the automation of the irrigation where we could set a schedule and control it remotely. Sadly it is no longer in use.
The picnic benches were in a sorry state of repair and many we fixed or replaced. Amazing what a coat of varnish can do.
Thanks to our efforts to provide water in various places in the reserve we were able to restore the reticulation system in the old nursery. This was a huge job as the pipes were damaged at each point where a sprinkler had been.
We even got roped in to repair the water supply to the houses when copper pipes were stolen and plumbers were not willing to come out due to previous non-payments.
The big fire of 2017 destroyed most signage and we did our best to replace most of them as no funds were available.
We had our small successes when we connected the arboretum to the main supply line and we had beautiful pressure to irrigate our newly planted trees
We learnt the lesson that using pallets in the nursery to put plants on is a waste of time, they rot in no time.
More rotten wood. The old misting house was falling apart so we combined fastening the side sheets with more shelf space.
The end result of salvaging wood from broken picnic tables to make a new one for the braai. It messed up a few planer blades though.
Whatever space we made it always got too small very quickly so here we make an annex to the shade house.
We had our share of beak-ins, not easy to make this door functional again.