Country Life: Farmer retires land he says "shouldn't ever have animals on it"

Follow Country Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts.

After a lifetime of working to clear land, Chris Bolderston is rewilding parts of his sheep and beef farm in North Canterbury.

Two years ago, he enlisted nurseryman Jamie McFadden to undertake ecosourced plant restoration across the rugged 540-hectare Lowry Hills property.

"I've been farming on my own account, mostly dairy, for 52 years and cut down a fair share of trees, so now is my time to leave this place better than we found it," Bolderston told Country Life.

A couple of steep hill blocks have already gone into QEII covenants and the re-introduction of tōtara trees is on the largest scale McFadden, from Hurunui Natives in Cheviot, has ever done.

"In terms of tōtara, there's now around seven hundred that we've put in. We've also planted other podocarp species like mataī and kahikatea that were local to this area," McFadden said.

Bolderston has named one of the covenants after McFadden. The fenced-off seven-hectare block reaches across a steep gully and up to an exposed rocky knob on the other side.

Clusters of established lancewood and fivefinger inhabit the lower gully areas. Further up, kānuka trees and newly planted poplar poles hold up the dry, erosion prone hills.

McFadden planted 300 tōtara trees in the clearings and kahikatea in the wetter spots. There's not much room for any more infilling, he said.

"It's going to look pretty cool in 10 years' time. But in 300 years, this is going to be tōtara forest like has not been here for a long time. We're bringing it back into this hill range."

Two five hectares blocks on the other side of the farm have been planted in podocarps too - they've aslo been named after members of the planting crew.

It's one of Bolderston's key long-term objectives, to have flourishing pockets of tōtara forest similar to what he's seen on the West Coast.

"They're a magnificent tree, light, strong, durable, aromatic timber, not unlike oregon or macrocarpa to be honest, but a true native," he said.

So far, several thousand trees, shrubs and erosion poles have gone into the ground, but McFadden admits planting them has been challenging.

"When I say to the staff that we're going to Boldy's farm, the eyes roll because it's steep and some of the sites require wearing crampons. When we've done a couple of days there we know we've had a workout!"

The painstaking mahi is tempered by the joy of seeing an increase in bird activity.

McFadden is starting to see more bellbirds/korimako and kingfishers/kōtare and he hopes tūī will return to feed on nectar from flowers of the native plants.

"Kingfishers love these gullies up on Punawai now. We hear them when we're working here in this native bush."

Apart from receiving some funding from Environment Canterbury for exclusion fencing, Bolderston, who is in his 80s, is footing all the bills for the long term planting project and he's not wasting any time.

"I've never been known for my patience and I've got way less days in front of me than I've had, so I need to be cracking on with it until such time as I fall off my perch."

The farmer the recites an timeless adage that praises people whose actions are designed to benefit future generations:

"So I'm an old man now and not claiming to be wise, 'but it's a wise man that plants a tree that he knows he'll never get to sit under'."