about us

We’re a highly collaborative and supportive team, coming together on every project to ensure our clients get the very best result.

Our Mission

Meeting a ‘growing’ need – we grow and plant quality natives for our customers’ riparian planting and ecosystem restoration projects, making it easy and cost-effective to get plants in the ground and flourishing.

Our Values

Our vision is for a future where a healthy balance exists between land use and the environment. Farming is highly productive and sustainable, and our community is widely respected for the care with which we treat our land and the water that passes through it. Our business inspires and supports ecosystem restoration throughout the region, for a future in which everyone prospers.

Clean Streams Karamea Strategic Focus 2024-2027

 Clean Streams Karamea is a not-for-profit organisation, working for the community and the environment.  We were founded in 2015 with the belief that communities can work together to create a flourishing environment by the proven method of planting native plants along waterways.  Our Karamea native plant nursery was built in 2020 and now produces 72,000 high quality native seedlings a year and provides jobs for 5 locals. In 2023/4 we planted 16,389 plants around Karamea, and a further 4354 plants were sold to others planting across the region. Our income is from government funding, charitable grants and sales. We are governed by a local committee, have a full-time qualified manager and work with schools, farmers, agencies and other conservation groups to get plants in the ground and grow connection to the land. As we approach our tenth birthday, we have developed this strategy to guide our next phase of development.

Our roots

Clean Streams Karamea was started by local man Craig Stenhouse in 2015, following a visit from Fred Litchwark of Whaingaroa Harbour Care in Raglan. Fred’s team have planted over 2 million trees in 20 years, cleaning up their waterways and completely transforming the health of their harbour. Following his visit, Karamea farmers and landowners were interested in the possibility of a similar project here, and CSK was born…
With the help of government funding, the nursery was built in 2020 and the first seeds sown in Spring that year. The ingredients for success are all here: the infrastructure is in place, we have an amazing growing climate and we have a passionate community behind us!

“From little things, big things grow.”

Paul Kelly, Songwriter.