Our Story
A family business with passion for heirlooms
Our story begins in 2007 when Benji decided to become a nursery man. His passion for providing communities with the know-how to nourish their families with healthy, heirloom fruit is coupled with his love of developing productive gardens and orchards. These landscapes coexist in harmony with both their surroundings and the owners who tend and care for them. The passion behind Forgotten Fruits is authenic and genuine.
We are passionate about growing strong reliable heritage varieties which thrive without sprays.
Forgotten Fruits is a family affair. While Benji heads the landscape design and consultancy his wife Laura works alongside him both on projects and in the nursery and is the chef of the Woodman clan. Their girls Willow and Olive can also be found in the nursery replanting seedings, collecting eggs and working on their land. Practicing what they preach, the Woodmans are masters at turning their organic heirlooms and productive gardens into food in the kitchen.
After many years of focussing on growing fruit trees and supplying them to home gardeners, we identified a need for proper design of orchard gardens. We found that many new property owners had little to no education around what, where, and how to grow a productive beautiful garden…this is why our consultation site visits are so popular. We only take on 2-3 large projects a year so once we are full up clients will wait till the following year.
If you get the foundations right and don’t rush the planting, the trees will bear and flourish very quickly.. have patience and site preparation is 80% of the job.
Our girls collecting kaipara peach material from beside river
“We're so impressed with his creativity, reliability, attention to detail, following of the original brief and of course the budget. The next phase for us is converting one of the main paddocks into a wetland. We can't wait.”
Jonny Rudduck & Nigel Shanks" Paparoa