Graham Windross
Executive Director at Zealandia

The major Zealandia Horticulture greenhouse facility now nestles on 12 hectares of ex-dairy land. Transpower, the owner and operator of the National Grid, had owned the site. It sites towers for the line from Whakamaru Power Station on the Waikato River in the central North Island to Whitford. From there the lines travel underground to Auckland.

Graham’s keen eye spotted it. It was a convenient location near his major city-based garden centre and DIY store buyers. But it also had access to the roads south. If you’ve picked up a flower or vegetable plant in almost any major store in the country, Graham probably had something to do with it being there.

“We grow millions of plants every year,” he says proudly. “That includes flowers, but also food-grade vegetables like tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers.”

From Backyard Garden to National Grower

The roots of the firm stretch all the way to a small back yard garden in Northcote in the 1970s. While working as a horticultural apprentice for the Auckland City Council nurseries, 15-year-old Graham took to growing veg for the local Foodtown supermarket in Barry’s Point Road in the back yard of his parents’ house. He was keen to make a career out of it. One day he got word that Malcolm Cassells, owner of a local flower nursery in Mt Wellington, was looking for a good, keen young man to lend a hand. So, Graham made the move from Council Nursery to Cassells nursery.

Malcolm had a thriving business and a good list of customers, but had his hips replaced when he was 59. Graham transferred his apprenticeship over to work with him. But only nine months later, Malcolm couldn’t carry on due to ill health.

“He said to me, ‘Take it on or I’m going to have to close it,’” remembers Graham.

It was a week after his 18th birthday. He went for it. Before long, he was soon nurturing the green shoots of a growing empire.

The Birth of Zealandia

In 1983 the firm bought an old quarry in Mount Wellington from Ivan Whale. In 1986 Graham’s father took early retirement from BNZ. He joined the business and began the process of levelling out the old quarry and constructing the new nursery. Mt Wellington Nurseries, as it was then called, stayed on that site for the next 25 years.

By the turn of the millennium, major customers wanted nationwide delivery of good plants across the seasons. Graham joined with the Wylaars family, owners of the Jornas Nursery in the South Island, to make it happen. In 2007, the two companies formally merged.

At that time the two Zealandia indoor plant nurseries, one in Auckland and one in Christchurch, were for sale and these were also purchased. The Zealandia Nursery business was originally started by Dave Goudie in the 1950’s and was one of the founding horticultural businesses in New Zealand.

Today Zealandia employs about 130 people at Clevedon and around 400 across the country. Together they’re continuing the story. Inspiring budding new horticulturists. Providing a home for a wealth of growing experience.

“There are people who’ve worked with us for 20 or 30 years,” says Graham fondly. Finding just the right location has helped pass on a lifelong passion for plants.