Nursery Outgrowers

Nursery Outgrowers.

The trees that will be planted in the Sabie and Sand River catchments are being grown by people who live in them. A network of four rural nurseries supplying Save the Sand's planting programme.

Ntirhisano
Project team and nursery operators stand together in front of the Ntirhisano Wa Rihanyi signboard at Lillydale during a handover of PPE and supplies.

Ntirhisano means cooperation.

— Xitsonga

It is also the name of a nursery in Lillydale, just inside the boundary of the Jongilanga Traditional Authority. The work there starts early. Shade cloth, seedbeds, seedlings counted out before the heat sets in.

The trees being grown there will be planted within a few kilometres of where they were raised, by households who live in the same villages as the nursery itself.

There are four of these nurseries across the Sabie and Sand river catchments.

Rows of saplings in nursery bags at Tiyimeleni Nursery, Belfast, with a nursery operator working among them in the background.
Rows of saplings, raised in the catchment they will be planted in.
Tiyimeleni · Belfast
A nursery worker at Tiyimeleni Nursery holds a marula seedling growing inside a repurposed plastic-bottle planter.
A marula seedling, in soil, in the hand of the person who raised it.
Tiyimeleni · Belfast
The Network

Four nurseries. Three Traditional Authorities. Two river catchments.

Four rural nurseries make up the network that supplies Save the Sand's planting programme. Each is run by people from the village it sits in. Each is registered with the project as an outgrower.

A wide view of Tiyimeleni Nursery at Belfast — long rows of saplings in repurposed plastic-bottle planters arrayed under tree shade.
Belfast

Tiyimeleni Nursery

Hoxane Traditional Authority
The Ntirhisano Wa Rihanyi Nursery signboard at Lillydale.
Lillydale

Ntirhisano Nursery

Jongilanga Traditional Authority
Two Hlulani Nursery operators in green workwear stand smiling in front of the cultivated beds at Newington, each holding a harvest of leafy greens.
Newington

Hlulani Nursery

Jongilanga Traditional Authority
Rows of saplings raised in repurposed plastic-bottle planters arranged under tree shade at a Sand catchment nursery — interim imagery for Amashangane until its own visit is documented.
New Forest

Amashangane Nursery

Amashangane Traditional Authority

Together they produce roughly ten thousand trees a year. The current procurement target across the catchments is far higher than that, and the network is being built to meet it.

What the nurseries do

Indigenous trees that belong here.

The nurseries grow indigenous trees that belong to this landscape. The marula is the anchor — the same tree at the centre of the project's custodian economy. Around it sit the supporting species the catchment has always carried.

Each nursery operates as an independent micro-business. Trees are grown to specification for the planting programme and sold to Sand Catchment, the project's commercial arm, at agreed prices. This is not a donation chain. The nurseries are suppliers. The project is a buyer.

A marula seedling in a translucent plastic-bottle planter held at Tiyimeleni Nursery, Belfast.
Marula seedling, repurposed bottle planter — Tiyimeleni, Belfast.
A nursery operator presses fresh substrate into a planting bag while a second pair of hands holds the seedling in position.
The work — substrate, seedling, hands.
A taller, more mature sapling stands in a nursery bag at Ntirhisano, surrounded by smaller saplings ready for the next planting cycle.
A sapling raised toward planting size — Ntirhisano, Lillydale.
From seed to soil

Raised. Purchased. Planted. Protected.

Trees raised in the project area are purchased by grant or commercial offtake agreement and planted under the Save the Sand VM0047 project to generate carbon credits. Once purchased the trees are transported, and offloaded at the Tree Custodian's planting sites. It is a supply chain that fits inside two catchments.
Two saplings raised in repurposed plastic-bottle planters stand on sand at Ntirhisano.
i.
Raised
Seeds collected from indigenous parent trees in the catchments. Twelve to eighteen months in the bag, in the shade, before a sapling is ready for sale.
Operators and community workers at Ntirhisano load saplings into the back of a SANParks pickup for transport to the planting site.
ii.
Purchased
Sand Catchment buys the trees from each outgrower under grant or commercial offtake agreement. The unit of sale is the tree — counted, tagged, and signed for at the gate.
A custodian in red kneels to settle a young indigenous sapling into a prepared planting hole, hands working the root collar.
iii.
Planted
Trees are planted on the Tree Custodian's land under the Save the Sand VM0047 project. Geo-tagged, registered, and counted against the carbon programme.
A tree custodian in a red Save the Sand jacket kneels and pours water from a bucket around a freshly planted indigenous sapling.
iv.
Protected
The custodian keeps the tree alive — watering, guarding, monitoring. The tree earns for the household by standing. Forty years on the same square metre of soil.
What it takes to grow

Running a nursery is not the same as growing trees.

A working nursery needs records, invoices, stock control, irrigation, shade structures, seed banks, and the financial literacy to carry a small business through the lean months. Most of this is learned, not given.

Training is delivered through a partnership between the Good Work Foundation and SANParks. Financial and digital literacy — and the everyday practice of running a nursery as a business — sit with the Good Work Foundation. Technical nursery practice is taught by the SANParks nursery team at Skukuza.

Capacity is one layer. The other is capex. Shade cloth degrades. Irrigation lines need extending. Seed stock has to be maintained. A nursery that produces a few thousand trees today can produce many more with the right investment. Ten thousand trees a year is the foundation, not the ceiling.

The network is being scaled with
SANParks
Good Work Foundation
Londolozi Ripple Fund
SADC · German Cooperation · GIZ · Global Water Partnership Southern Africa
Project team members and nursery operators stand together at Tiyimeleni Nursery during a site visit.
Site visit and partnership review — Tiyimeleni, Belfast.
Tiyimeleni Nursery operators unpack new irrigation hosepipes and infrastructure beside a water tank.
Irrigation lines arriving — Tiyimeleni, Belfast.
A SANParks nursery technical lead speaks with project team members at the Skukuza nursery.
Technical practice taught at Skukuza — SANParks nursery team.
10,000 trees / year
Current network output
The combined production of the four nurseries today. The procurement target across the catchments is well beyond this — the network is being built to meet it.
The Catchment Grows Itself

Trees grown here. Planted here. Kept here.

A river runs through it.
Support the network

To support the nurseries — or learn more about the Public-Private-Community Partnership behind them — please be in touch.

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