Hillbrook Estate Restoration Planting
Restoring marginal land and waterways on a regenerative coastal farm
Client:
Hillbrook Estate
Location:
Coromandel
Services:
Ecological Consultancy / Native Plant Nursery / Operations & Implementation
Project Overview
Hillbrook Estate is a working regenerative farm on the Coromandel coast. The Tapaparoroa Stream rises and ends within the property, and the owners see themselves as kaitiaki of the whole catchment.
Since 2021, Scrub has delivered three major winter planting programmes, restoring wetlands and riparian margins and returning steep and marginal grazing land to native vegetation.
Project Scale
≈58,000
NATIVE PLANTS PLANTED
11 ha
OF MARGINAL LAND RESTORED
3
PLANTING SEASONS DELIVERED
Our role
Scrub has worked with the landowners from programme design through to native plant production and planting.
· Planting design and species selection for steep, riparian and wetland sites
· Ecosourced seed collection from the property and nearby habitats
· Native plant production at the Scrub nursery
· Site preparation, including a sprayed and unsprayed trial
· Wetland restoration and native planting
Growing plants from local seed
Plants were grown specifically for Hillbrook using seed collected from native remnants on the property and nearby regenerating habitats. This retains local plant genetics within the restoration programme.
Working with the farm’s values
The first planting in 2021 included around 23,000 plants and trials of sprayed and unsprayed preparation and non-chemical maintenance. Later rounds of around 15,000 plants in 2022 and 20,000 in 2026 used no chemical site preparation. The earlier plantings are forming canopy while the latest plants establish, alongside the owners’ stock exclusion and predator control work.
