About Us
Our Plants
We are proud to offer quality, locally produced plants at seriously affordable prices!
To keep our costs down while maximising quality, we choose to grow only a compact range of species that we can source and propagate ourselves, ensuring complete control over the entire growing process.
All parts of our plant production process occurs at our exposed Okato nursery, from cutting or seed to finished product- ready to be planted onto your property.
We don't claim to have a plant for every purpose- we focus on the plants you need a lot of, mainly Hedging/shelter plants, a few hardy ground-covers and some revegetation/riparian species as well. We are on a mission to provide a compact range of healthy, hardy plants, at a better price than anywhere else.
Our Story
Surf Highway Natives was started by Max Woodnorth as a culmination of years of horticultural study, practical work experience and a dream of becoming self-sufficient in both work and life.
Growing up with a keen interest in native plants and the outdoors, Max went on to study a Certificate in Horticulture at the Southland Institute of Technology in 2020 followed by a diploma in horticulture at Lincoln University in 2021.
The next step in the journey was to spend a few years working across the viticulture, landscape and plant nursery industries, aiming to get a taste of different enterprises while also saving as much as possible.
After moving to Taranaki and settling on a one acre property near Okato, work began to transform the once-bare dairy paddock into a viable production nursery.
Several months later, after installing solar systems, driveways, water tanks, water pumps, storage sheds, potting sheds, shade-houses, weed mat and plenty of stock plants the nursery was finally ready to start producing plants. Through this process of getting the nursery infrastructure set-up, a huge amount of effort also went into trialling various potential products including flowering natives, indoor plants, pot plants, herbs, native revegetation, hedging and many others.
Our first successful commercial crop was a few lines of common native trees and shrubs that are suitable for riparian planting projects, primarily for local farmers’ and community planting projects. Soon we expanded into growing some popular native hedging species, which we found to be more popular with lifestyle block and urban property owners with demand remaining consistent throughout most of the year.
These are the two main products we focus on today; a few lines of hardy revegetation/riparian plants available annually in Autumn/Winter and good hardy hedging/shelter species available all year-round. Looking ahead we are keen to continue expanding our range of hedging/shelter plants so keep an eye on our products page for new additions!
