Manager: Darrell Johnston - RD 1 Brightwater - NELSON
Phone: (03) 542-3317
River Terrace Nurseries was started in 1984 by Darrell and Karen Johnston.
The property was bare land running sheep. Our intention was to create a Fruit and Nut tree nursery and to make a living off the land. Fourteen years on we grow fruit and nut trees and native trees, for supply to garden centres, lifestyle blockholders and orchardists all over New Zealand.
The land here is flat fertile river terrace, and has been ideal for nursery use. We have the Wairoa river running past which we use for irrigation. We propagate all our trees on site. Rootstocks are lined out in the winter, most trees are budded or grafted the following autumn or spring and grown-on to be 2year old trees.
We rotate the nursery around the property with fallow land having a 3-4 year rest. We cover-crop this with blue lupins. Most of the trees planted around the property are for trial and to propagate from.
In the future we plan to specialise more in some areas of fruit and nut tree production. We have always had a fairly organic approach and are currently under transitional Bio-Gro Certification.
Darrell and Karen both work on the property fulltime and have two young children!
http://www.nzero.co.nz/treecrop/conf98/river.htm