The Sydenham Botanic Park Advisory Group is hosting a daffodil planting day today to show Tauranga City Council why the park should be kept.

Barbra Collins and Jocelyn Hosie at the Sydenham Botanic Park today. Photos by Daniel Hines.

Advisory group committee member Lisa Adams says today's daffodil planting day is all about public awareness of the park and its future plans.

'It's all about making people aware of the park and where we want to head with it.”

Lisa and her husband started a petition in 2011 in support of the park after council dropped the $30,000 budget for park maintenance.

In April 2011 TCC signalled through the annual plan process that it intended to drop the $30,000 budgeted for the upkeep of the three hectare property gifted to the city on condition council maintain it as a botanical park.

A little more than a year later Lisa says if the park is maintained up to council standard they can keep the park – all they need is help from the public to fund plans to do so, she says.

'We are really relying on the public to help.

'The locals really want to see toilets and rubbish bins and nice places to sit and that's all in our future plans but it's just little steps.”

Lisa says a plan has been drawn up for the park following a 'Gondwana sub tropical line.”

She says the park will feature native trees and continue to preserve the 13 varieties of Kauri people are so unaware of.

Skala Keating, 2 ½ with nana planting daffodil bulbs at the Sydenham Botanic Park.

'It's a must. It's one of the biggest collections of Kauri in the world. We have had people come along today and say ‘hey this is awesome.”

Planting is taking place at the botanical park, off Millers Road from 10am to 1pm today.