KEY POINTS:
The nikau palms gracing Queen St have cost $454,000, but nursery owners say ratepayers have snared a bargain.
Small groupings of the fully grown palms are giving a sense of the new $43.5 million Queen St, although it will be 10 years before an avenue of smaller, exotic liquidambars begin to create a dense canopy to rival the exotic trees that were cut down.
Of the 47 palms, 25 came from a farm near Karamea, on the West Coast. Farmer Selwyn Lowe sold the palms for $562.50 each but by the time they were removed, transported and maintained by the Specimen Tree Company, they were sold to the council for $8800 each. The Specimen Tree Company provided another 18 nikau from Taranaki and four others from other sources. Three nursery owners who specialise in selling large trees told the Herald that the council got the trees at a good price.
One owner said nikau were hard to transplant and worth a lot of money, particularly mature, 60-year-old specimens like those in Queen St. Another nursery owner said they were "cheap" at $8800.
Specimen Tree Company manager Stuart Barton said of all the options considered, the Karamea and Taranaki nikau had the aesthetic and robust qualities that the design team required.
The officer in charge of the upgrade, Jo Wiggins, said the council also paid $42,200 for 55 exotics.
