The nursery and shade house at 89 Thornton Road, Cambridge opened in February 2002.
Visitors are welcome. If the doors are open come on in.
The Nursery has power and water and we propagate 2-3000 trees a year.
The current premises are leased from the Waipa District Council. Prior to 2002 the nursery was in the Gaslight Theatre area but as the ground was contaminated from the old coal-gas works, we were forced to move to our new premises. Here's a photo of the building under way:
From left to right: Ian Scott, Jim Bennett, Neville Kerr, Stephanie Blackie, Brian Mayo, Robert Wilkes.
For many years, water supply was not a problem. We did put in a big water tank, but it was never properly connected and so didn't fulfil its purpose. We thought about it occasionally, but did nothing effective until the Council put in water meters in 2018. The prospect of being billed for our irrigation water focused our minds intensely. Even so, we had to make several attempts to get the system working. We found that the control valves had deteriorated over the 20 years or so that they had been in place. We bought new ones, re-arranged the piping and now the irrigation system works as it should, and we have still not been billed for water. The plentiful supply of rain this Spring has kept the tank full.
Sometimes even we can't go outside. This is what we did on 1st. September 2015 as the rain poured down outside. It's a very short video- only a minute and a half.
Expansion.
Initially, we were given just 20 metres square, but after a few weeks we found that we had been given the rest for planting. Two of these photos show our planning team laying out the planting scheme for final approval by the Council. The other shows the freshly-painted new fence that closes off the old gate to the horse paddock.
30th November 2021.
Today, 30th November (already!) we got rained off our planned work, so pottered about in the nursery instead. We weeded some of the plants in their pots, repotted some, and replaced some weed mat. We also planted the reserve land we have been given to plant beside our extended carpark. Here are some photos of this planting. We'll end up with a nice little park here, and may even put in a picnic table later, when the trees are bigger.
We had always thought it would be necessary to metal the new carpark. We could see it getting muddy and slippery in winter, especially at the two entrances. We got a very good price for the job, so went ahead with it in March this year, 2022. Here a post about it, put up by the people who did the job: We are very happy with the quality of their work, and the neat and tidy way they went about it.
Maintenance.
Our nursery needs maintenance as much as our plantings do, but unlike them, it is sometimes necessary in the nursery to get down to, shall we say, bedrock.
