New Zealand Certificate in Horticulture Production (Level 4) (Nursery Production)

Summary

Learn the skills needed to work in today's commercial nurseries.

This programme is for you if you are already working in the nursery industry or looking to gain skills for employment in this field.

Learn how to propagate plants and identify good business practices while gaining an understanding of how to optimise plant growth and health using industry tools and techniques.

A stepping stone into a career growing plants and trees, and a job that could range from fruit growing or vegetable production, landscaping for homes or parks, a plant nursery enterprise, to tree production and revegetation to enhance our environment in line with the one billion trees programme.

Learn the skills needed to work in the Nursery Industry growing plants for food production and forestry, plants for our landscapes and native revegetation to enhance our natural environment.

What you will learn

You will learn advanced propagation and managing rootstocks for grafting and budding, as well as understand plant hormones and how to manage plant growth and health.

You will gain a working knowledge of your plants' water, nutrient and climatic needs, operating irrigation systems, and developing a plant crop protection programme to manage any pest disease and weed issues.

Part of the programme is developing a planting plan for a growing project of your choice. You will also set up your own soil-less media experiment to trial soil mixes, learn to produce a scale drawing for a landscape, and plan, plant and monitor a revegetation project.

You will also learn about the machinery and equipment of a nursery and will look at the business side of running a nursery and supervising others.

Every Friday morning, our Marlborough learners will catch the free bus from the Marlborough Campus to the Richmond Campus for a day of practical learning before returning to Blenheim in the afternoon.

This ensures that our Marlborough learners can put their learning into practice through practical projects, interact with visiting industry experts, and work together as a team.

Career pathways

Work can be at a wide range of levels and in the nursery sector.

Positions can be seasonal to permanent. They can include nursery propagator, horticultural consultant, crop manager, cool store manager or science technician.

An example of the type of career path you can have in horticulture is beginning as a nursery assistant, moving up to seed source propagator, becoming production coordinator and then a manager.