There are a range of resources available, such as Waikato Regional Council’s Clean Streams Guide, that provide an introduction to managing riparian margins. If you want to understand the issues facing waterways on your property, reading these is a useful starting point. The Planting Tool builds on this information, by summarising the key issues, objectives and most common site conditions, and identifying the plants known to perform in those specific circumstances.

The first step is observation. What can you see? Look at your waterway and notice its features: water flow, water colour, existing plants, aquatic life, bank steepness, erosion, fences, and so on. Use the following descriptions to help you decide on the main issue you wish to deal with.

Do you know if there are native fish in your waterway? If you don’t know and would like to find out, ask Waikato Regional Council’s Land Management Officers for help. If you would like to provide fish habitat, choose the more appropriate of the two fish habitat options, either iinanga (whitebait) or other fish.

Is there native vegetation already growing on the banks? If so, then you might want to improve the diversity of the existing vegetation. Are there springs or wet areas on the banks? If so, these riparian wetlands need specific plants that can cope with very wet soils. If there is no vegetation or only grass and weeds, then establishing native plants at the site might be your objective.

Are the banks collapsing or slumping? Then you need to measure how high the banks are to choose the best option.

If water quality is a problem, you might see a lot of algae or water weed, cloudy water, or notice a bad smell. Does water runoff from the surrounding land? If so, then filtering run off might be your main objective. If the land is flat and there isn’t much runoff, the establishing riparian cover will help water quality.