Ness Lake Forest Nursery
Established in 1980 and located approximately 24 kilometres northwest of Prince George, the nursery is focused towards the mass-production of container tree seedlings. These seedlings are utilized by tree-planters to reforest areas disturbed by timber harvesting, wildfire, mining, and insect epidemics. Our seedlings play a vital role in improving British Columbia’s environment through the establishment of forests, carbon capture and sequestration and by enhancing the merchantable growing stock of trees that will support the BC Forest Industry in the long term.
Our experienced and knowledgeable senior staff have been in the forest seedling nursery business for over 30 years. As employee owners, we are personally invested and committed to producing high-quality, hardened and acclimated forest seedlings to pre-defined specifications that meet or exceed our clients’ expectations.
The nursery contains over 100 free-standing greenhouses and 2,100 square metres of open compound growing space capable of producing approximately 20 million seedlings annually. Our 40,000 square metres of greenhouse growing space is computer-controlled and monitored 24-hours per day to ensure an optimal growing environment for the seedlings. Other facilities include a large (40,000 square-foot) seedling packing, cold storage, thawing and shipping facility capable of and storing and shipping 80,000 seedling boxes on an annual basis.
We custom-grow under contract spruce, lodgepole pine, Douglas-fir, larch, Abies/fir, Cedar, aspen and birch for spring, summer and fall planting in the following common stock types:
- 512A* can be grown as 2+0 stock
- 412A
- 412B
- 410
- 411B
- 310B
- 309A
- 211A
To ensure our spring plant seedlings establish and perform in the field, we test their root growth capacity using strict inhouse protocols prior to shipping.
Production support equipment includes:
- Automated high-precision Mosa Green seeding line with a capacity of 4,000 containers per shift.
- Four deep wells supplying pathogen free water to covered reservoirs for automated greenhouse irrigation.
- Five injector sites providing the greenhouses and compound irrigation systems with accurate fertilizer mixes.
- A laboratory for testing pH and electro-conductivity of water and growing media.
- Computer monitored environmental control systems in all our growing and storage facilities providing 24-hour alarm monitoring and data logging.
- Wifi network providing coverage across the nursery operating area supporting a tablet-based Quality Management System to manage production, irrigation, inventory and quality.
- Efficient LED supplemental greenhouse lighting to provide extended photoperiods in the production of secondary needles in pine seedlings and to prevent premature bud set in other conifer species.
- 56 blackout equipped greenhouses for the production of uniform and hardened spruce and Douglas-fir crops.
- Lifting lines sorting and packaging up to 400,000 seedlings per shift to contracted morphological standards.
- A 40,000 square foot integrated lifting/packing, cold storage and shipping facility consisting of 7 computer controlled and monitored cold storage units capable of storing 80,000 seedling boxes, a 6-bay thawing facility and 3-bay shipping dock.
- On-site caretaker residence and monitored security.
Our Services
Sectors Served
- Forestry
- Oil & Gas
- Mining reclamation
- Carbon Offset
Department Contacts
Kelly Byfield
Operations Manager
