Ōpaoa Reserve/ Marshal Place Nature Reserve is a Council Reserve, which the local Forest & Bird branch are involved with, along with the Lions and the Leos.

The Holdaway family planted native trees alongside the Ōpaoa river in the 1930s, and continued to look after them and plant more trees. When the Council cleared plants along the river there was pressure to leave the the trees in this area, as they were by then a well established stand of native trees.