West Coast student-led nursery branching out

Students from the West Coast, who are part of a conservation course specialising in nursery production, have managed, in just two years, to design and develop their own nursery and distribute just shy of 500 plants throughout their community.

The students come from Greymouth, Westland and South Westland High Schools and the course that they are part of is run through the West Coast Trades Academy and delivered by Papa Taiao Earthcare.

The students decided to build their own native tree nursery enterprise, Trees for Change, as they were struggling to ecosource trees for a planting project. Instead of giving up they built their own nursery from scratch.

Morgan Burrows, a second-year student, says ecosourcing is collecting seeds close to where they are to be planted.

“It means the plants will be suited to local conditions and more likely to survive.” .

Through the process the students also identified that many young people are disconnected from nature and their communities, so they became motivated to do something with their nursery that would help connect rangatahi to the environment and their communities.

The group managed to secure funding through Greymouth Rotary and constructed a contract with them called 'Trees for Māwhera' (Māwhera is the Te reo kupu for Greymouth). This provided seed funding for the development of the nursery and funded their first large scale community planting project.

The Trees for Māwhera project sees every student from year 1 -13 within the Grey District gifted one native plant to plant within their community - over 2000 trees. The Trees for Change students lead the whole project, from organising a plan with the schools (each school is given three choices; take the tree home, plant them through their own project, or work with the T4C team to plant them out in a community project), to growing the trees, to tree distribution and in some instances support with the planting of trees.

“It’s great to work with the wider community and schools and have more young people involved,” says Delaney Black, a student involved in the project from Greymouth High School. Finn Mitchell, also from Greymouth High adds: “I like working with the kids and getting them planting and caring for trees. I like to be out there and getting a bit dirty.”

Finn also says that it’s through the project that he has learnt a lot, not just about trees but about teamwork, paperwork and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.

This year the team have commercialised their nursery and entered the Young Enterprise Scheme. This puts them in a position to sell native plants to the general public as well as continue to supply plants for planting projects.

“We have the opportunity to provide a lot more trees for other planting projects, but we require funding,” says Delaney. The group has multiple non-profit community projects that would like to source their native trees.

“It would be cool to have local companies support the work we are doing as well as support the environment.” says Finn,

“And put their name behind something great,” adds Morgan.

If you are interested in working with the Trees for Change team to set up a tree gifting or planting project for a group you're connected with, please email them on [email protected]. Alternatively, if you or your company want to sponsor a tree gifting or planting project, please get in touch. You can keep up to date with the team and their amazing work on Facebook under Trees for Change NZ or @treesforchangenz on Instagram.