Trees For Canterbury

General information

The Beginnings of Trees For Canterbury
Tim Jenkins (The present chairperson of The Green Effect Trust) was on student radio talking about the importance of trees for the environment. At the end of his talk he invited anyone who was interested in increasing tree planting in Canterbury to phone him up. One of the people who phoned had the name of Harmony Aquarian. Tim met with Harmony (an aptly named musician) and Cathryn Freebairn and discussed the fact that there were many people keen to see more trees and willing to plant them but the limiting factor was the supply of trees.
The solution was conceived – to create small nurseries that could supply community groups and organisations with the trees that they required. The main initial sites of the Trees For Canterbury project were Cathryn’s back yard and Nicho Greig’s back yard. Back yard nurseries were set up in various other places around Christchurch and eventually all this was focussed on a site in Opawa Road.
From the start there was a strong Trust (The Green Effect Trust) with people of widely varying experience and expertise to spearhead the cause of Trees For Canterbury. What made the difference between a good idea and a successfully accomplished good idea was the commitment of the people working at Trees For Canterbury. These people were mostly on employment work schemes at first, and community support in general – seeing to it that Trees For Canterbury grew from a small operation in back yards to the fully operational nursery that it is today.
One of the interesting features of Trees For Canterbury has been the use of recycled materials. This has included old greenhouses, hessian pretending to be shade cloth – all features of a shoestring budget in combination with a recycling ethic. The fully professional nursery facilities now present disguise this past somewhat. In the past the buildings were old recycled car cases mixed with materials collected from demolition sites. The use of recycled articles including cleaned old planter bags, plant pots, two litre soft drink bottles and re-used root trainers, led to the conclusion that the 1 litre milk carton was just right for the vast bulk of Trees For Canterbury’s production needs. The milk carton allowed good, healthy vigorous root growth, encouraging roots down more than around to achieve a more drought resistant seedling. The square shape also helped with space economy. Nowadays, many of the sale plants are grown on in planter bags to satisfy customer expectations and to allow larger grades of plants to be sold.
At first it was intended that the nursery would grow both native trees and multipurpose trees such as nut crops and high quality timber trees. Trees For Canterbury soon focussed on native plants since these were the ones of most interest to community groups and T4C wanted to support revegetation programmes in the region.
The original idea was for the nursery to survive on the generosity of donations and volunteer labour. Soon it was conceded that the sale of a portion of the plants grown was the most effective and sustainable means of financial support