Selby Gouldstone is “nuts” about getting more

Press, 17 January 1979, Page 15

Selby Gouldstone is “nuts” about getting more

Next time someone in your family has a baby, don’t send flowers to the new Mum in hospital. Plant a nut tree for the child, instead.

You may not gain much favour with the local florist shop, but you will bring a glimmer of encouragement to a man who has spent the last three years and thousands of dollars waging a oneman crusade to convince the world, and New Zealand in particular, of the value of fruit and nutbearing trees. Selby Gouldstone, an Englishman who emigrated to New Zealand 14 years ago, is happy to be known as Auckland’s “Nutman.” He has mortgaged his home and exhausted his savings all in the interest of getting his nut tree project off the ground.

Selby Gouldstone had no vast knowledge of trees when he began his project in 1975. As a boy in England, he had eaten the harvest of many fruiting trees including centuriesold walnuts on an estate open to the public, near his home, in Staffordshire. After learning to identify various trees and enjoying finding out about them, Selby Gouldstone was shocked by attacks of vandalism on them in

New Zealand trees. A particular incident in 1974 when vandals did $40,000 worth of damage to trees planted by his local borough council inspired him to embark on a programme of education around Auckland schools. So far he has provided more than 500 trees for planting in the school grounds, with varying degrees of success.

“At one primary school I was invited back a second time, to plant an avocado tree,” he says. "When the planting was finished I asked the headmaster how the school was getting on with the macadamia tree I’d planted on my previous visit. It turned out that the tree had lasted only a few months because they’d sprayed some grass around it and killed it. At another school, he planted a nut tree which survived two weeks before the school authorities decided they needed a piece of play equipment in precisely the same spot and ripped out the tree. But Selby Gouldstone has high praise for other schools where a real effort has been made over the years, not only to make the school environment more pleasant for the children, but to make the

children more aware of the values of trees.

Though he wants to continue his programme in the shcools, lack of time and shortage of finance has forced Mr Gouldstone to concentrate more on his nursery work. He now leases two hectares of land from the North Shore Drainage Board where he makes use of the sludge to feed and nurture an astonishing variety of young trees, plants, and seedlings, ranging from macadamia, avocado, chestnut, and walnut to coffee, cotton, cranberry and cashew. “The Ministry of Agriculture says cashews won’t grow in New Zealand. I don’t believe them,” he says. And this statement is typical of his attitude to most of the recognised farming and horticultural expert organisations in New Zealand.

He has had many a struggle with politicians and scientists who do not share his views, but back in the seclusion of his greenhouse, Selby Gouildstone continues to potter about, bagging the latest supply of young macadamias, or intricately grafting an avocado plant, to make it bear fruit years before the experts say it can.

Not only is he supremely confident in his own

knowledge and ability, but he has a pity, bordering on contempt, for “the bureaucrats” who do not share his ideas of what nut trees could do for New Zealand.

Selby Gouldstone has what he describes as “a vision of nuts.” The first and most important purpose of nut-and fruit-bear-ing trees, he believes, is to enrich human lives by providing them with a better and more productive natural environment. He wants people to learn to identify, harvest, and enjoy top quality nuts, and to appreciate the trees that bear them. But at a more down-to-earth level, he produces reams of facts and figures which suggest many economic advantages from the cultivation of nut trees. Just to mention a few examples, he points out that Hawaii and California have nut industries running into hundreds of millions of dollars. New Zealand, he suggests, could export high quality fruit and nuts, to several countries with an unsatisfied demand.

“We could reduce our import bill. At present we import 90 per cent of the nuts we use. Nut shells and husks yield many byproducts for the manufacture of fuel, oil, wood fill-

ers, explosives, chemicals, and protein. They can even be used to feed our stock.”

Nut trees have a long span of life, continuing to produce for many years. Some chestnuts in Europe are still bearing fruit after a 1000 years. Timber from nut trees is one of the most sought-after of hardwoods. According to Selby Gouldstone, both our fruit and timber industries, could receive an enormous boost. But his message continues to get across only slowly. Over the last two years, he has spent about $15,000 in promoting his project, helped by a few hundred dollars in donations. To bring his dreams to a fruitful result will demand an income of about $130,000 over the next two years. Mr Gouldstone has formed two organisations. One is a non-profit company to produce a large number of trees for planting in schools and public places. With this company he also aims to continue development of his nursery at North Shore, to research and produce the best varieties of trees for New Zealand conditions, and to provide an education programme on the benefits of productive trees.

The second organisation, Nutman Holdings, Ltd, has been formed to market surplus trees some time in the future and to provide further income to support the project. By trade, Selby Gouldstone is a hydraulic engineer. He works for himself, mainly to plough money back into the nut tree business. But he admits he has run his business down to almost nothing, while he has spent most of his time looking after the 8000 trees at his nursery. Probably the “Nutman’s” two greatest hopes for the future are still being worked on. One is a book which he is writing, “An Australian and New Zealand Guide to Food Bearing Trees,” to be published this year by Paul Hamlyn, Ltd. He may also write a similar version for American West Coast conditions. The other hope of finance to help the project can probably come only from research foundations to which he has applied for grants. Meanwhile his “nut” philosophy continues to widen. He sees the fruit and nut tree as the answer to many of the world’s serious problems, for example the chronic food shortage. — Reprinted from “Forest Product News.”