YOUR INDUSTRY
Twins Grant (L) and Brent (R) Tennet
Tauranga twins Brothers’ lifetime in citrus and plum trees By Geoff Lewis. Photos by Trefor Ward Deep among the shelterbelt canyons of Te Puna near Tauranga is a tale of two brothers who provide many New Zealand gardens with citrus and plum varieties. Grant and Brent Tennet are identical twins. Born in Feilding, the boys had come north with the family in the early 1970s, and after high school both took up four-year, 8,000-hour apprenticeships in horticulture with the Tauranga City Council's parks and reserves department before establishing their own horticultural enterprise. Brent had spent more time working in a citrus nursery while Grant had a more general background. They bought a 5ha block on Snodgrass Road which had been a dairy farm – all pasture and not a tree in sight – and established what is now Copperfield Nurseries Ltd which was first registered with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (now the Ministry for Primary Industries) in 1975. The operation grew trees for other people, garden centres and orchardists, and took about five years to get off the
ground. Initially it focused on shelterbelt trees before building up its stocks of fruit trees and moving to specialise in citrus. Back in the 1970s citrus was an important industry in the Western Bay before the take-over of kiwifruit, and more recently, avocados. It was a tough job for a couple of young guys to get into the market selling to existing orchardists and garden centres, and a matter of building up contacts and credibility. Citrus comes in more than 50 varieties. Grant and his wife Sharon at Copperfield produce seven varieties of lemons, six varieties of grapefruit, two of tangors and tangelos, 12 varieties of oranges, 18 of mandarins and seven varieties of limes. There are the popular sorts – about 7,000 Meyer lemons a year along with easy-peel mandarins and early fruiting Satsuma. But there are also more rare varieties which have developed popularity as New Zealand's culinary tastes have become more sophisticated.
The ORCHARDIST : MAY 2021 15
