Horticulture Graduate Mentoring Next Generation

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. 

“I'm always keen to expand my knowledge and will take any opportunity I can to learn more about things that interest me. The world will always need horticulturalist and agriculturalists to put food in the supermarket and on people's tables. With increasing populations, the need for more food will increase along with it. It's always a good safe bet,” Darryan says.

A standard day on our orchard for Darryan usually consists of a combination of maintenance jobs and crop work.

“That list consists of things such as checking plants, fertiliser levels, and irrigation counts. These however only fill out a portion of the day and therefore the rest of our day is filled up with the various jobs surrounding our three crops. For example, pruning or thinning.”

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.

“The support from my tutors has been exceptional. Both Harmine and James have been unreal about helping with horticultural questions both in and out of course, they also always have their best foot forward. They have a very whanau mindset when it comes to our class which I think is awesome,” Darryan says. 

“Support from work has been great as well. Work is always planned around course. I can always come into class to make sure I won't miss out on valuable information.” 

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.”

Darryan is also optimistic about where his studies will lead him.

“In five years’ from now I want to be managing my own orchard of some sort. The horticulture industry is always innovating and it's hard to predict the trends of the industry, but I want to be in a position in which I have a fundamental understanding of horticulture as a whole not just one specific crop, which is what I’m hoping to achieve in my course at Toi Ohomai.” 

He says the industry is vital to New Zealand and is in need of more skilled workers.  

“Just like builders, plumbers, truck drivers, farmers and others, horticulturalists are a keystone in a functional society. The demand will always be high for people within the industry. So, if working outside in a hands-on environment while building skills for the future is something you’re into, then I think horticulture might be the choice for you.”