Volunteers scrambled on St Clair sand dunes to plant sand-stopping grasses at the weekend, but the project co-ordinator hopes one day the dunes will be orange with native plants.
About 60 volunteers planted marram grass on Saturday along the sand separating St Clair Beach and the Kettle Park rugby grounds.
Supervising ecologist Paul Pope said the plantings were a way of catching sand which was blowing over on to the park’s No1 ground.
The project cost about $1500, some of which was provided by the Dunedin City Council.
"It will help for now, but ideally we’d redo this all in natives."
In the future he hoped to start a trial to replant the dunes with native pingao, which would have once covered the dunes.
"In the winter they would be completely orange and in summer they’d turn bright yellow.
"Ironically, they were almost made extinct by marram grass."
For this he hoped to get volunteer assistance from the Otago Corrections Facility, he said.
Council parks and cemetery manager Gareth Jones said about 400 plants were used for the project.
"The work is being done through existing contracts, with a small additional cost for the purchase of the plants.
"At this stage, there are no plans for planting on other areas of the beach."
