People in prison can participate in industry training qualifications, which enable them to gain skills and qualifications through on-the-job training.
While this varies across prisons, our prisons provide industry qualifications and employment opportunities ranging from creative industries, building and construction, to manufacturing and engineering, horticulture, farming, and hospitality.
One of Tongariro Prison’s horticulture programmes has proved fruitful for New Zealand’s conservation efforts, with over 1,000 seedlings of a rare native plant cultivated in the last year.
Olearia gardneri (Olearia), commonly known as Gardner's tree daisy, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is found only in New Zealand. At one point it was ranked as New Zealand's rarest tree, with only 160 wild individuals known.
In 2018, the Department of Conservation asked the Tongariro Prison nursery if they would like to try and grow Olearia from seed. The germination rate (from seed to seedling) was very poor with only four seeds successfully germinating.
The seedlings that emerged took another two months to show any more signs of life before they could be moved to a larger pot. After they were repotted, two of the four turned black and died for no apparent reason.
People working in the nursery figured out that the seedlings did not like to be handled with bare hands, even after washing, but the two remaining Olearia showed no significant signs of further growth.
All was not lost, a few weeks later another two Olearia appeared in the seedling tray. The nursery received some heat pads and an instant change in the growth rate was noticed. This led to over 25 successful seedlings before Covid-19 put a stop to the initiative.
In early 2024, the Department of Conservation again approached Tongariro Prison and asked them to have another go at planting Olearia. It looked like it was going to be a slow start; it took two months for the seeds to germinate.
Fast forward and now the nursery has successfully grown over 1000 to seedling stage!
“The first time we tried growing this seed we found them rather difficult to germinate back in 2017-18 with a very low success rate,” says Horticulture Instructor Murray. “This time round was completely different with a very high success rate and fast germination time. Understanding the propagation techniques, and triggers for germination, has enabled the high success rate as well as availability of fresh seed. The men learn propagation techniques such as stratification, scarification, cold moist stratification, warm moist stratification to name a few. Olearia has certain light triggers, it needs to be kept moist during germination, and the seeds can’t be covered, to name a few.”
The nursery is “extremely lucky” to be involved with building the relationship with the Department of Conservation and with growing several varieties of endangered plants to be returned to the rohu that they come from.
“Tongariro Prison has a long-standing relationship with DOC,” says Deputy General Manager Site Pathways Luan. “Besides the nursery growing plants for DOC, our community team does the maintenance of the Tongariro walkways as well as predator trapping. We foster these partnership relations by having a direct investment in the local community, but also creating future opportunities for the men involved in these initiatives.”