Plant Hawke’s Bay nursery will recover 

Marie Taylor, founding owner of Plant Hawke’s Bay at Waiohiki laughs when asked if anything was done to prepare the 11-hectares native plant nursery in Omarunui Road for Cyclone Gabrielle.

 “Well, we turned the irrigation off!”

 “But we had no idea this was going to happen,” she says of the flood that covered the entire nursery – some 500,000 plants – in three metres of water and 2.5 metres inside the potting and equipment sheds.

Although devastating to find the recently developed nursery underwater and cloaked in a layer of silt, Marie feels “lucky and positive”.  She is hopeful her team, and an army of volunteers including RSE workers and contactors, can rescue 50% of the plants on the ground, carefully cleaning each of silt.

“It’s going be a difficult year ahead, but we will recover.”

She has found it interesting to learn that in the 1938 flood when the Tutaekuri broke its banks, “this site was covered in 2.5 metres of silt.  This time the silt is only between 5 – 40 cms deep which indicates the stopbank slowed that process down.”

Plant Hawke’s Bay, co-owned with Rob and Coral Buddo, is a leader in eco-sourcing seed from Hawke’s Bay plants and trees endemic to the area and Marie can see HB is going to need a lot of trees going forward. One thing the flood has shown her is that poplars, although not natives, do well in floods with their deep and wide roots so she will grow some of those too. 

“There’s a lot I have been thinking about,” she says. “Do you know the poem ‘If’  by Rudyard Kipling?  it’s the poem for now.

“We’ve been lucky, “she repeats “and I feel very grateful for the community support I’ve had. I have been overwhelmed by how fantastic everyone has been.”

See this recent BayBuzz profile of Marie Taylor

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