Thirty years ago botanist Dr Hugh Wilson had a novel idea for trying to make hilly farmland on Canterbury’s Banks Peninsula and turn it back into native forest. It was 1987, and the suggestion that gorse would be the perfect cover for self-sown native seedlings was met with derision by many.

One farmer even labelled it the work of ‘fools and dreamers’. Fast forward today, and Hinewai Nature Reserve is now 1500 hectares of native bush and his story has been told in a new documentary, aptly titled ‘Fools and Dreamers’, about to screen around the country.