Hawke's Bay retail shop goes but business grows

Penny Baker is closing her Pukehou plant nursery because business is booming.

"The whole idea of opening the retail operation was to get the wholesale going," she said. "I needed a public face, and it did it brilliantly - better than I ever expected.

"The wholesale side ended up just taking off hugely, so now we work seven days a week flat out. We are building a new nursery for this summer - it is going to hold another 50,000 plants."

She credits the success of the wholesale business Te Mara Nursery, based on her Omakere farm, to good service and price. "I don't have the overheads at the farm - I use land that is unsuitable for grazing."

She said contract plantings made a lot more business sense than retail. "With contract work you are not actually spending any money until you have a contract - you don't pot a plant until someone is buying it."

She said farmers were her main clients for many reasons: To encourage ducks in wetlands, keep waterways clean by soaking up nutrients, retire unsuitable farming land, shelter belts, lane ways, wind breaks and farm forestry. A recent client planted 2ha of totaras.

She said farmers had always planted trees but the trend had gained momentum in the past ten years because of the Hawke's Bay Regional Council's Afforestation Grant Scheme. "They pay 50 per cent of the costs of planting and fencing if the farmer retires the land." Plantings near waterways were also subsidised.

Hawke's Bay Regional Council was her biggest single client, with 23,000 trees planted this year through planting schemes and mass plantings at areas like Pekapeka Wetland and Karamu Stream.

Her third largest customer was the Paper for Trees scheme for schools. "Basically the schools get free trees according to how much they recycle," she said.

She was expecting increased demand from farmers wanting to retire land damaged by the recent weather bomb on coastal properties. Her own farm had been hit with fences down and stock lost. Losses could have been worse but for the trees she and her husband had planted.

"Where our poplars are planted it didn't slip but on the lease paddock next door on the same face, where there are no poplars, it did," she said.

The retail shop, opposite Te Aute College and beside The Paper Mulberry Cafe, never quite made it as a business and a staff member would be let go.

"I opened the retail business to grow the wholesale side of the business and the idea was that I put someone in their full time, but it hasn't got to that."

Her closing down sale runs to the end of the month.