BY DANA CARTER
Bill McKinlay isn’t from around these parts. He grew up in Trentham and spent much of his life in Otago but came to Tasman a decade ago to be closer to his son and daughter-in-law.
Bill used to grow vegetables but then a few things happened to change his course. Hortons Nursery hosted an event several years ago that Bill attended. He needed a new hedge. And then along came Covid.
“Being in isolation gave me a lot of time to potter around and come up with new ideas,” Bill says.
Now, four years on, Bill has a shade house and nursery containing 7,500 plants of over 20 species. He supplied 4,000 plants last year to local landowners wishing to plant natives on their land.
Bill’s nursery is mainly set up to grow coloniser species – species that grow reasonably quickly in a new restoration area and create a habitat for other trees.
The Dovedale Nursery is one of four community nurseries in the Motueka Catchment and Bill has hosted many events at the nursery with the community, including children from Dovedale School, with the help of his friend Debbie Win, Chair of the Motueka Catchment Collective Steering Group.
Bill is an experimenter. He’s not just happy to do the same old things. He’s always testing new ideas in the hope of getting stronger, faster plant growth and efficiency of restoration. He grows plants in different sorts of containers to test growing speed and plant health.
He also grows a few plants to attract butterflies, including a native tree nettle which is host to the red admiral butterfly. He makes seed bombs using an old concrete mixer. He also builds wire cages for the root trainers, so they don’t have to be replaced so quickly. Some things don’t work out, some things do.
The seeds Bill collects are from several areas around the catchment, but the majority are from nearby areas of bush including QEII covenants. He says he collected and sowed 10 - 20,000 beech seeds last year but most were infertile so only a dozen or so germinated – all part of the growing process.
Bill is part of the Biodiversity and Restoration Thematic Group of the Motueka Catchment Collective. The positive effects on the environmental health of the Motueka catchment from the successfully thriving Dovedale nursery can’t be underestimated. And it wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for Bill volunteering his land, time, and skills.
