Alex Croasdale-Saunders

Alex Croasdale-Saunders always had an interest in gardening, but has turned that pastime into a career, and is now helping train the next generation. Alex studied the Fruit Production for Profit course at Toi Ohomai between 2018 and 2021 and is now the operations manager on an orchard, mentoring a current employee through his horticulture studies.

“I liked growing things when I was younger. I mucked around in gardens and got a job at a Native tree nursery instead of doing Year 13,” Alex says. 

“It gave me the eye for detail and work ethic for what’s required in orchard management. I decided to take it seriously and make it a career and I’m glad I did.”

Alex is the operations manager at Pahoia Orchards in Whakamarama and encouraged his 2IC (second in command), Darryan Andrews, to also study horticulture at Toi Ohomai. 

Pahoia Orchards currently has three crops, kiwifruit, blueberries, and avocados and Alex says diversification is hugely important in horticulture.

“You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak,” Alex says.

“We are looking at becoming more diverse, and growing gold as well as green kiwifruit and more avocados and berries. I feel like as an orchard you need to scale up to cater to the rising costs in horticulture, to help soak costs, provide local people full time work and it will mean we are a large grower of the three main horticulture crops in New Zealand.”

Diversification and multi-cropping means you are harvesting different crops at different times of the year, enabling businesses to expand and not rely solely on a well-performing season of one variety of crop and offer year round work.

Alex says he values his time at Toi Ohomai and the course gave him essential skills to help him build his career. 

“Lesley and Harmine were great tutors and always pushed me in the right direction and were always open for a chat about horticulture.”

Which is why he encouraged Darryan to do the same course.

Alex says horticulture is a great industry to get into as it is full of opportunities.

“I’m looking forward to seeing more technology being implemented into orchards such as AI, Robotics and more automation, there are many avenues you can pursue in horticulture, everyone needs to eat fresh produce.”