Ben Scott grew up working on his father's market garden in Marshland, Christchurch, and reckons that was enough to convince him growing vegetables was the last thing he wanted to do for a living, but as it turned out, he's still in the family business.
"Dad grew a range of different crops in Marshland, but he did everything he could to try to put me off following in his footsteps and he gave me all the toughest jobs possible," recalls Ben, who headed for a different life in Auckland after graduation.
He was back in Christchurch a couple of years later when his father's manager suddenly left, and he offered to help out for a few days. Twenty years later he still hasn't left, though the business has evolved and relocated since then.
Marshland was a summer-only operation – it was just too wet in winter – so when Ben heard of a block of coastal land where lettuce was being grown in winter a couple of hours north of Christchurch at Conway Flat, he saw an opportunity to expand the business.
"Tom McFarlane had started growing lettuces up here 20 years ago and proved it could be done, so we came up and took over the lease, starting on 2ha."
That was in 2006, and a year later they bought the whole 5ha block. "We'd drive up and spend a couple of days up here and the rest of the time in Marshland."
With his father's health deteriorating, Ben found himself increasingly taking over management. In 2008, his father died. "Dad was one of the first people to grow broccoli in Canterbury so we carried that on as well as lettuce, and in the last seven or eight years we've moved into machine-harvested baby leaf spinach and mesclun."
They closed the Marshland operation and for a while leased land near Dunsandel, south of Christchurch, before buying a block near Southbridge. The Southbridge operation has since been sold and they have bought and converted a block at Spotswood, inland from Claverley Farm, for their summer operation.
Ben gives credit to Horticulture New Zealand for assisting him get regional council consent to expand the operation at Claverly.
"Without the work of Horticulture New Zealand in the background it would be unlikely that the latest plan change by Environment Canterbury would have allowed for this farm to be used for vegetable growing," he says.
The team at Horticulture New Zealand put in a significant amount of work to demonstrate the environmental upside of converting this farm to horticulture, something that no doubt will benefit both the environment and other Canterbury growers in the future."
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For more information:
Horticulture New Zealand
Tel: +64 0508 467 869
Email: [email protected]
www.hortnz.co.nz