It felt like the skies parted especially for a recent planting day at Kopurererua Valley.

The week prior had been constant rain and everyone involved was amazed the sun came out.

Planting 200 trees at Kopurererua Valley is part of Bay City Mitsubishi's commitment to plant 1000 trees by the end of 2020.

Managing Director Aaron Chatfield says they want to refocus their community support on reducing the impact the automotive industry has on the environment and planting trees is a great way to achieve this

'We feel that helping to enhance our local environment is the perfect focus for our community support programme.”

Marketing manager Dan Angland is coordinating the 1000 trees project and says 1000 trees is only the beginning of what could be achieved.

'We understand that what we're doing is only small but if every business did something small, then the effect would be huge.”

Dan is working with the Tauranga City Council to ensure the trees and areas planted are what Tauranga needs most.

Their first planting day at Kopurererua Valley saw 22 volunteers plant 200 kahikatea or New Zealand white pines as part of the council's wetland enhancement project.

Tauranga City Council's natural environments coordinator Dianne Paton says, the wetland has recently been retired from cattle grazing and is nicely regenerating itself back into a native wetland.

'The Kahikateas enhance this natural process and will assist in bringing back the native flora and fauna.”

Dianne took part on the day and says everyone had a ball, judging by their smiles, laughter and how quickly all the trees were put in the ground.

Pauline and Les Manley are veteran tree planters, they volunteered on the day as a chance to meet new people and help the community.

'It's a nice way to get outside and a nice way to meet people,” says Pauline

'We've got the time to help, so it's nice that we can help the environment.”

'I don't know how Dan did it but he got good weather, before and after it had been awful.”

'I just put the trees in and my husband dug the holes which was a little bit harder because it was so wet, but it was good, we enjoyed it.”

The couple are looking forward to the next one when planting season starts again in 2020.