Plantpro & Sons

FAST, AFFORDABLE AND RELIABLE

Plantpro have the experience and expertise to get your landscaping project completed as quickly and effectively as possible.

WE OPERATE NEW ZEALAND WIDE

Plantpro have completed major walking track rebuilds for the Department of Conservation other private landscaping projects throughout the country.

SPECIALISTS IN OUR FEILD

Our work speaks for itself. Our many happy customers, both residential and commercial use us because we are the best at what we do.

FREE NO-OBLIGATION QUOTES

Whether you have a perfect vision or you're not sure what you want to achieve, Plantpro can provide you with a free, no-obligation quote.

Having a plan to landscape a garden or outdoor space is as much a requirement as planning the house itself. Your landscape design should detail levels, location, orientation, materials, plants and trees, and perhaps, if required, a specification for implementation. Plant names and spacing are critical.

From the plan, material costs can be worked out, labour estimated and construction started.

Initial design means any required or desired changes throughout the build can still be styled to suit the overall concept.

Good design will create a cohesive and importantly, appropriate, finished result.

Plantpro & Sons offer landscape and garden design. Costs vary. Design work is charged on an hourly basis and is often discounted if we are engaged to complete the build. A concept plan may cost a few hundred dollars. A more detailed plan incorporating all of the above mentioned elements may cost a thousand or more.

What level of plan you require is dependent on your ability to imagine planned outcomes. You may need lots of detail and in commercial jobs this is the norm. For a private landscape pictures, images may be enough, but it pays to have a reasonably detailed plan as it will help with costing and budgeting.

The designer may use a CAD system or draw free hand. The key to success is whether they get the message across effectively, and you the customer, can understand and imagine the outcome.

It is often wise to go through the plan, “on the ground”, with a can of dazzle and a tape measure.

Another important way of getting ideas across is for the client to cut out images from magazines, of the style of landscape or garden they like. There are thousands of on line sites dedicated to gardens and landscaping.

Every year we plant thousands of shrubs and trees in gardens, effluent fields, parks, re vegetation projects and commercial developments. All of this work is 100% guaranteed, which means if a plant fails it will be replaced. Plants do fail!! For a variety of reasons. This warranty is valuable, but what is more important, is the way the planting is completed in relationship to ongoing maintenance.

The key to having Plantpro & Sons complete your planting project, is that, yes the plants will grow, yes they will be monitored and yes, the maintenance will be minimal.

Plants are sourced from lots of wholesale nurseries and can on occasion be grown to order. This is often done for large scale commercial work.

Plants are also at the whim of fashion, like they say, “one day you’re in, the next day you’re out”.

In colonial NZ, what came through mail order was what got planted and this defined what is now known as “cottage garden”

The use of exotic plants for ornamental planting was common up to the mid-eighties. Since then, there has been a huge shift to NZ natives. At one time Ti-Tree was a dirty word, and it was cut down without a thought. Now millions are planted every year along with Coprosma, flax species, five finger and many other colonising species. This planting of native NZ shrubs and trees, imitates the natural regeneration if the land is left alone.

Common areas for regeneration include slip country, wet land areas and coastal and estuarine margins.

The use of native plants has become common when selecting species for ornamental use in the domestic garden.

There seems to be resurgence in Tropical styled gardens with the use of palms, Cycads, mixed with broad leafed, hardy tropical Cordylines, Gingers, and fruit.

In Northland our climate allows us to plant hardy tropical, and warm temperate specimens, with particular success in coastal areas where minimum temperatures seldom reach single figures. Yes, I have experienced frost on the flats at Whananaki, but it’s a rare event!

A theme common in urban gardens is to use large numbers/groups of single species in one planting.This style can be successfully adopted in the domestic garden, particularly if it is large, and has long view lines.

View points are important when planning your planting. Who is going to benefit from your efforts and where are they looking from? As they approach your house? From where you stand in the kitchen?From the bedroom window?

Lots to consider, making it very worthwhile getting some help.

Building Decks, pergolas, retaining walls, structures for climbing, bridges, steps, swing bridges

Attention to detail, longevity, user friendly, practicality. All a must, when building something of value and something to add value to your property.

Off the shelf or bespoke, Plantpro & Sons will offer an outstanding result.

It appears there are so many hooks when thinking about building. Like planting, it’s wise to have a working plan, costs estimated, consent if required, or not. You may also consider a formal contract with the builder, and under new protection laws, this has become mandatory for all work valued over 30k.

Retaining walls are designed for one thing only, but so often you see them leaning forward to greet you. Decks need to be safe, attractive and user friendly.

The materials you select also have a large bearing on end result. Hardwood decking may cost 2.5 times more than pine, but may look and last 5 times better?

Retaining systems rely as much on the strength of the structure, as the ability for that structure to shed any moisture build up behind it. Drainage is the key, its water that pushes walls over!

We don’t build houses at Plantpro, although we have. We build all the other landscape items that might surround the house.

A path or drive, patio or helipad. Hard surfacing using pavers, geocel, grass pavers, ready mixed concrete, gravel or slabs. All require exacting preparation to achieve a long term high quality result.

Ask about our paving services
In plain English, that means a good base. The clay soils predominant in Northland, means we have very mobile sub soil, requiring extra depths of foundation preparation for our roads, paving and building.

A concrete slab, 100mm thick, has enough integral strength , to support domestic traffic as a drive or carpark. Adding reinforcing steel to the concrete won’t stop cracking but will hold it together when it does crack. If a bigger load is to be catered for, then the strength and thickness to the slab will increase.

Paving is more flexible, requiring more foundation preparation. For domestic situations, this may mean a foundation depth of 100mm compacted gravel. For larger loads this will obviously increase.  The same applies to sealing and hotmix surfaces. Both require a sound base to support long term integrity.

There are lots of ways to pave the outside hard surfaces around your home. One job we completed recently was a patio, built with Macrocapa sleeper edging with the surface areas finished with compacted cement reinforce clay. The screeded, compacted surface was power float finished and left to cure. Although this wasn’t as durable as concrete, it was far cheaper, softer to live with and the clients understood its limitations. They recognised the clay surfaces would last perhaps as long as the untreated Macrocapa edging.

Another project used grass pavers set in a 2m x 2m concrete beam grid, as a drive. This allowed the drive to absorb the rain water, rather than shed it all to waste. The green grass softened the appearance of an otherwise completely utilitarian structure.

Combinations of concrete, paving, gravels, timber, stone, all add vibrancy to an otherwise practical structure.

Retaining Walls & Stone Work

Dry stone walls, concrete walls, retaining walls of timber, brick, block or stone. All have their place in various landscapes.

Get a retaining wall quote
The key to success when building a retaining wall is to allow the potential weight of water build up behind the wall to escape. You are simply replacing the mass that previously formed the toe of the bank, with an artificial restraint, of equal strength or mass, whether it be made of stone, timber, brick and/or concrete.

Any structure over 1.5m high will require design and consent, and so it should.

Retaining walls are designed for one thing only, but so often you see them leaning forward to greet you. This is due to poor design , usually under strength materials, often combined with poor, or no drainage.

Unfortunately they often add very little to the aesthetic value of the landscape and are often, butt ugly. They are expensive to build and if they are holding up your property, your money has disappeared into something unseen. It they are holding up the property above you, its even worse. Not only do you have to pay for it, you also have to look at it.

Some clever design will keep the structure to the minimum, and perhaps build in such a way, whether with materials or shape to reduce the overall impact. Planting to cover a structure like this is possibly the most effective way of dealing with this.

Plantpro Ltd are excited to be launching a new maintenance division this year. Mark Gelderbloem comes with a background in hard and soft landscaping and has already hit the ground running with a few maintenance projects around Whangarei. Mark has extensive horticultural experience and can turn his hand to almost any landscaping task from preparing lawn areas to pruning trees and hedges to preparing planting plans and installing garden spaces.