About Us
Nestled in the Waitaki Valley 10 minutes north of Oamaru, Oregon is an 18 hectare bare root & containerised nursery specialising in forest, shelter, native, and amenity species.
Our bare root propagation focuses primarily on a lot of forestry, shelter and amenity lines.
We also have a 1.2 hectare sized garden centre which holds a variety of stock lines ranging from small plugs to huge PB45 bags.
With our 1 hectare main greenhouse we can operate to a 5 million plant capacity and utilises computer technology for complete environmental control.
The Ornamental Greenhouse is 800m2 and contains concrete hotbeds to aid propagation
Our containerised standing area capacity can hold upwards of 10 millions plants while we have enough open ground land to hold 2 million bare root plants
History
The nursery at Ferry Road was established back in 1984 as Ford's expanded out of Reidston to take advantage of better soil conditions for propagation. In the early to mid nineties Ernslaw One Ltd joined with Ford's to grow and promote containerised forestry. This led to Ernslaw buying the containerised portion of the nursery and starting up Oregon Nurseries Ltd. Of course in December 2007 ONL then purchased the remainder of Ford's to become the nursery you see today.
Staff
ONL has 14 staff involved in the business. Good people are key to any business and ONL had 14 of them! The nursery has been under the management of Kevin Fearn for the past 4 years. With his experience in the industry he is moulding ONL into a top class propagation facility. Helena Findlay heads our container propagation and has been involved with the business and local horticultural scene for several years. Ian Davies runs our Garden Centre and bare root production. Ian has been involved in the nursery and forestry industry for years and is the man to talk to about your planting needs.
Our staff all have good old fashioned kiwi attitudes and are always up for a good laugh, both important aspects of working at ONL.
ONL has a very team based approach to work and training, this makes for a fun and friendly work environment with thorough training and work ethics. Staff are trained to cover all areas of the work in the nursery; whether they are needed to help with forestry, natives or ornamentals the staff are more then capable. This helps in work quality and gives the staff the best understanding and expectations of our end product.
Future of ONL
ONL is constantly working towards offering the highest quality we can in everything we do. Whether it be propagation, presentation, marketing or customer service we are always looking to builds on the skills we currently employ.
We believe that the fresh start back in 2004 and a renewed outlook this year has kept our focus on reviewing our methods and engaging in ways to improve our nursery. This helps us as we look into the future and target ways to meet the needs of tomorrow.