The Open-Ground and Container-Raised Indigenous Plants Comparison is a Sustainable Farming Fund project.

Part of the Mahurangi Initiative: A hope-based
network restoring and enjoying the Mahurangi.

The primary object: The rapid and widespread adaptation and transfer of open-ground nursery methods (used to raise forestry species exotic to New Zealand) to facilitate the production of indigenous plants…

The pilot nursery location at Rodney District Council’s wastewater treatment plant, Jones Road, Omaha Flats. Photographer Jonathan Barran

• 1 in larger quantities
• 2 at lower prices
• 3 with more reliable root systems

…to greatly enhance sustainable land use options.

This project has a high probability of kick-starting a timely transformation of indigenous vegetation nursery, and establishment, practices key to facilitating the third fundamental progression in New Zealand’s rural landscape:

• 1 indigenous forest to exotic pasture
• 2 exotic pasture to exotic forest
• 3 exotic pasture/forest to sustainable indigenous forest.

The adoption of radiata pine-style mechanical nursery methods may be the only practicable means that indigenous trees can be established—whether for restoration purposes or for sustainable timber production—on a nationally significant scale*.

Jaap van Dorsser pioneered this work in the 1960s, whilst working for the Forestry Research Institute, in response to a then directorate imperative to develop sustainable indigenous forestry methods. Now retired, van Dorsser is principal nursery advisor to the project.

The project is principally funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s Sustainable Farming Fund and is strongly supported by Rodney District Council.

• * To convert just 1% of the Auckland Region’s half million hectare area, some 21 million plants would be required; to restore 10% of the Auckland Regional Park’s 37 000 hectares, would involve over 17 million plants. The Omaha site could potentially produce 4.4 million 2-year-old plants annually.

Peter Cimino Cole, project manager  + 64 9 422 0872

The project so far

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