Cape Town – The Tree-preneurs nursery on Spier wine farm has saplings and young trees growing out of any type of container growers can lay their hands on.
Near the entrance a plant peeks out of the top of an orange and white Wellington boot, while an aloe looks happy in a plastic bucket atop an old toilet. From halved plastic drinks bottles and old bulk yoghurt containers, to a woven basket and a large Styrofoam box, each is home to a small tree – mostly of an indigenous variety.
Project manager Lesley Joemat knows the details of each and every tree.
She’s the guiding force behind the Wildlands Tree-preneurs, an initiative that farms out the growing of indigenous saplings to surrounding communities.
These Tree-preneurs later barter the young trees back to the nursery once they have reached a certain size, exchanging them with the Wildlands Conservation Trust (WCT) for grocery hampers or educational support.
The WCT is a conservation body that has successfully built similar models, combining ecosystem restoration with human well-being and development, in KwaZulu-Natal. The Spier Tree-preneurs project, launched in 2010, is the first of its kind in the Western Cape.
The wine estate’s sustainability director Heidi Newton-King said the project aimed to further ecosystem restoration by growing and planting indigenous trees, while encouraging people excluded from the formal economy to earn money by growing trees.
The nursery, where Joemat is inspecting the plants, is the heart of the project.
It is here that saplings are grown as seed stock for residents of areas including Blikkiesdorp, Kayamandi and Tafelsig.
The seedlings are left in their care to be nurtured and grow until they are ready to be bartered back.
Walking past hundreds of plants stacked on pallets under green shade netting, Joemat said the project had to gain the trust of its tree growers when it was first launched.
“After the first barter, the growers started to believe in the potential of this,” she said. “We stuck to our word.”
The project relies on the private sector to finance the tree bartering. Funding is provided by financial services company PSG, while bicycles have been donated by MTN-Qhubeka. Growing support has been received from Distell.
“It is through partnerships and collaboration that together we achieve more impact,” said Newton-King.
Joemat said the project had been so successful that there was a waiting list of Tree-preneurs to help grow indigenous trees, including Cape ash, sand olives, wild olives, white stinkwood and yellowwood.
Her team don’t just hand the seedlings out, however. They also give the advice to the tree growers about raising them, and do follow-up visits to check on the progress.
Once the trees have reached bartering size, they are exchanged for vouchers by the growers. Value depends on the tree size.
A resident who successfully raises 50 trees can expect a payout of a few thousand rand.
These vouchers, Joemat said, are used to buy food, school supplies and school uniforms.
Joemat knows each and every of the 181 growers, and provides them with individualised support. Those with green thumbs are left to their own devices; others need more coaching to grow the trees.
The Spier nursery, where Joemat spends much of her time, is a site of constant experiment.
Five years of hard work and trial-and-error testing have shown her and her team what works when growing indigenous trees.
She said where the trees end up being planted is of particular importance.
The greatest impact on ecosystem restoration is achieved, Joemat said, when the trees are fed into initiatives like the Stellenbosch Million Trees Project and the riverine restoration project of the Stellenbosch River Collaborative.
Weekend Argus