Directly opposite the famous Poor Knights Islands on one of the most eastern points of New Zealand's north island is the native garden and nursery of Tawapou Coastal Natives. Located between Tutukaka and Matapouri the nursery welcomes visitors throughout the year.
In 1995 when Guy was managing the Tutukaka Marina and his wife Sandra, a nurse decided to grow and sell native plants. Guy had inherited a passion for growing native plants from his father, had already set up a greenhouse and was growing a wide range of native plants as a hobby, he had also constructed a 'Poor Knight's Island garden' at the Tutukaka Marina. Sandy, a keen gardener was ready to balance her role as mother of two young children with the opportunity to work with plants and develop the nursery with the appropriate accounting skills necessary to run a small business.
Over the past fourteen years a native plant nursery along with an extensive native garden and a collection of 'off-shore island' and coastal plants has been created on the coastal farm at Matapouri. Guy and his wife Sandra know the plants that are suitable for challenging conditions, low rainfall, wind, salt spray and poor soil. They have an extensive range of native plants and are specialists in coastal and northern off-shore Island plants.
Tawapou Coastal Natives is a wholesale/retail nursery operation producing approximately 180,000 bagged plants per year from PB 3 size onwards. We produce growing on lines and root trainer plants under contract.
The majority of what we grow is in a PB 3 grade, the reason being, that we can produce a cost effective, and high quality plant of good size suitable to those buying in bulk such as Department of Conservation, District Councils, Property developers and Landscapers.
At Tawapou we specialize in growing plants from the warmer northern regions of New Zealand with particular emphasis on coastal and "off-shore island" plants
Almost all of what we grow we produce ourselves, collecting seed and cutting material from the property and other near by areas. We buy our ferns in from a local grower who produces them from spores..

We consider our key plants to be Xeronema (Poor Knights Lily pictured top right), off-shore island forms of Rhopalostylis (Nikau - above left), Marratia salicina (King fern - right), plants that are not found in abundance in other nurseries, and as a consequence we have been building up numbers of these key plants over several years and we will continue to increase our range of sizes and quantities of these plants.
Our garden enables us to trial every plant before we sell it.
Your success is our success!
We have a weekly freight service to Auckland on Thursday's and daily freight to Whangarei which links with other transporters north or south.
We are only to happy to help with advising on plant selection and offer alternatives or source plants from elsewhere if we don't have them in stock.
Anytime you're in the area we would welcome a visit and enjoy showing you around our nursery.
For further information please see our website, www.tawapou.co.nz or contact Guy and Sandra Bowden 09 434 3971