The lizard garden along the City to Sea Walkway began in 2019. It features native plants such as tī kouka (cabbage trees), wharariki (mountain flax), tauhinu (coastal tree daisy), mingimingi (twiggy coprosma), pohuehue (muehlenbeckia complexa), koromiko, and mānuka. Five years on, the plants are doing well, but one thing has been missing: basking areas! Reptiles are ectotherms, meaning they rely on external heat sources to maintain their body temperature. While needing external heat, typically sunlight, most of New Zealand’s skinks and geckoes prefer to bask cryptically or with only part of their body in direct sunlight. Rock piles create an ideal habitat where skinks and geckoes can be partially or fully concealed amidst the rocks while still absorbing heat as the sun warms the stones.
If you have been walking by the garden, you might have noticed a pile of rocks beginning to form. While we might call them rock piles, these structures do not only have to be made of rocks; they can include old bricks, broken pottery, chunks of concrete, and more, as long as they can be placed to make small crevices and hollows for lizards to hide away in. The rocks and other materials used at our lizard garden are being collected from places around the reserve.
Creating safe places for our native skinks and geckoes is vital as their numbers continue to decline. Creating a lizard garden in your backyard or neighbourhood park can help provide a habitat for lizards in urban environments. However, creating a suitable habitat for them is not the only measure needed to attract lizards to an area. Reducing or eradicating predator presence is equally as important. Most of our native skinks and geckoes do not have a defence against predators like rats, stoats, mice, and cats.
At Tawatawa Reserve, volunteers continue to participate in predator trapping, planting, and weeding to create a natural haven for wildlife and people amidst the hustle and bustle of town. Keep an eye out at the Lizard Garden to see how the rock piles grow and try to see what other materials might make their way into the structures!
The rock piles are being constructed by Kate, a Conservation Biology Master’s student studying at Victoria University Wellington.
Tawatawa Reserve 