Plant Hawke's Bay Recovery
Plant Hawke’s Bay rebuilds after Cyclone Gabrielle.
Plant Hawke’s Bay (PHB) is a wholesale and contract grower of eco-sourced Hawke’s Bay native plants, Himalayan Oaks, and poplars. Plants are grown for ecological restoration, conservation, and landscape projects. Since February 2023, they have been working hard to recover from the significant impacts that Cyclone Gabrielle brought. Founder and co-owner Marie Taylor says they are now back in business and have ‘built back better’. And they have adopted several new approaches that have allowed them to increase capacity and streamline their operations.
In 2020, Marie teamed up with local farmers, Rob and Coral Buddo, and Plant Hawke’s Bay’s nursery was relocated from Ahuriri to a larger existing nursery site south-west of Napier. By January 2023, there were around half a million plants growing in the ground, in pots and bags, with many under netting. They had just completed expansion of net-pro area of over 1.3 ha. Nets offer advantages of protecting juvenile natives from effects of direct sun in mid-summer, and with a variety of netting sizes, potted plants can be moved around to provide the best growing conditions depending on their developmental stage.
However, in February of 2023, during the height of the cyclone, the river burst its stop banks and swept down the road, putting the nursery under 3 to 4.5 metres of water. Greenhouses were blown out, containers and skip bins floated away, and two large gates were torn apart (one was recovered from 100 metres down the road). Inside the potting shed, the water level rose to nearly 2.5 metres.
Marie reports they were ‘incredibly fortunate’ to escape structural damage to permanent buildings, so the clean-up was able to begin as soon as the water receded. Marie recalls the local people were ‘amazing’, with over 200 volunteer days offered. As well, PHB employed an RSE crew for 2-3 weeks. They have also been fortunate to have about 75% of their crop able to be produced from seed or cutting, to a saleable plant within a year. Some native trees such as totara and kahikatea require at least two years of growth, but this worked in their favour during the recovery period.
The initial focus was on rescuing the plants from the silt and washing them. This took around two months. Then the focus turned to production. Initially, additional plants were accessed from another local grower to help fill existing orders.
After the flood, the water-logged ground was unable to support heavier machinery, such as tractors, that are traditionally used for spraying protective herbicides and fungicides on plants. Rust is a particular enemy of poplars and the threat of this disease on the in-ground poplars did not diminish just because it couldn’t be reached, so a solution had to be found.
A local agricultural drone operator was called in to carry out the necessary work. And it has proved to be a time and money saver, as well as being easier on nursery soils. Scotty Horgan of Airborne Solutions arrived with a drone capable of carrying a 50 litre spray tank.
The drone has been a ‘game changer’, says Marie. It has proved its worth in time saving, as well as accuracy of application. Because it can fly closer to the plants, and creates a down draft as it flies, there is reduced risk of spray drift, and more spray lands where it is intended. Time is also saved, with comparative application rates by tractor in a typical orchard environment reported as being around 2 ha per hour, compared to a drone, that can apply sprays at 7 ha per hour. Airborne Solutions also can spot spray between 70 and 1500 spots, for preparation before planting out, allowing newly transplanted trees and shrubs to get a head start on weeds.
Mechanisation of other tasks has been a high priority at the nursery, with machines for seed cleaning, potting, and filling trays, and pivot loaders for moving plants around. Conveyors are soon to be delivered, adding more automation to the potting shed.
PHB is currently growing two cultivars of Poplar - Veronese (ideal for windy, drier sites) and Kawa (better for valley floors and moist areas). Marie says poplars are a very useful pastoral farm species. They not only provide shade, shelter and an additional fodder source (in droughts) for animals. They are also very good at holding erosion-prone hillsides together, can produce good timber if managed well, and they sequester carbon.
Marie explains they are producing rooted cuttings for poplars, as opposed to selling ‘poles’. The benefits of this approach are reduced risk to clients because of poles not ‘taking root’, extending the planting season to give greater flexibility to farm schedules, and reduced costs. Poles are selected from an in-ground plantation near the nursery.
One challenge of growing poplars at scale is their rapid growth, with the ability to grow from 10cm to 1.5m in six months. The other is controlling disease. Cuttings are taken from an in-ground block in late winter and potted up at the nursery. This year (2024) they have produced more than 40,000 poplars as rooted cuttings.
Plant Hawke’s Bay has a long tradition of connection to conservation work. A wide variety of natives are being grown from local eco-sourced seed, such as titoki, Kakabeak, totara, coprosma species, carexes, flaxes and Te Mata Pimelea. It is proud to have been associated with the citizen/restoration science Urban Kakabeak Project since 2014. Only 108 plants are known to be still surviving in the wild, and only in the Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay regions. PHB is growing about 4,000 Kaka beak plants (mostly red and pink varieties) with unique genetic populations, confirmed by DNA testing. While they lost two thirds of their plants in the flood, there are around 20 distinct lines currently grown at the nursery.
Marie says while ‘Hawke’s Bay needs trees, more than ever’, farmers affected by the cyclone are understandably concentrating on rebuilding fences and reducing costs in the current economic conditions. It makes for a difficult trading environment, but when people are ready to plant again, PHB will be ready for them, with around 600,000 native and exotic plants ready to make their contribution to the Hawke’s Bay landscape and its inhabitants.
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