It's the school community project that started out as a seedling and grew into a forest. Today, some 300 native trees sit on the school's former librarian's land.

Students from Welcome Bay School planted around 300 native trees to thank their former librarian Jill Best.

Jill, who had been working at Welcome Bay School for 16 years before she retired in February this year, had bought a piece of land but didn't know what to do with it.

Welcome Bay School teacher Nathan Buller says each year the school has an overall theme that they work on throughout the year, and this year their theme was to connect with the community.

'I found out that Jill was taking on this big chunk of land that she couldn't build on for GeoTech reasons,” says Nathan. 'It was just sitting there and she didn't know what to do with it.

'I talked to the kids and mentioned that she had spent her entire life helping out the community and said maybe it is time that we should help her out a little.”

He says that some of the children's initial ideas were 'very far out”, but they eventually came to the conclusion that, with consent from Jill, the land should be restored back to the way it once was.

They received support from Tauranga City Council and 300 native trees from several companies and organisations, such as Paper4trees, who donated 200 trees, and Kereru Gardens, Palmers, Tauranga Tree Company and Naturally Native.

There were about 90 children from three classes involved, along with teachers, the school's caretaker, parents and neighbors.

Welcome Bay School student Izzy Troughton, 9, says they didn't want to spend money on the project, so they all got together, wrote letters, and made phone calls to nurseries and plant shops explaining their project the need for donations.

'We went on a school trip to the Kai Mamaku forest and they let us take home some seedlings that we had to look after,” says Izzy.

'Mine was a Totara and I named it Tutu because it looked like it had a tutu around it.”

Nathan says this whole project has been very exciting for the kids and they have learnt a lot along the way.

'We just let them go,” he says. 'It's scary for a teacher to let things go, but it has ended up somewhere beautiful.

'The kids learnt all about the different types of trees, how to look after them and how important native trees are.”

Jill says it was good to see the kids getting stuck into it and that they had learnt an immense amount during the project.

'I was excited when I found out about what they were doing - my plan was always to do something on the land but the kids bet me to it,” says Jill.

'”It was great to see them learning about conservation in a practical way.”