Nursery and sapling production

What the business is

Laying out poly bags on a plot, sowing seed, tying grafts, and selling the saplings a season later — that is a nursery. It sells in two ways. One is a roadside stall moving two or four plants at a time, which pays the month's expenses but is not a business. The other is supplying thousands of saplings at once into government and NGO plantation programmes, and that is where a hobby nursery turns into a trade. The government rates are not small. Under the 2025-26 agricultural rehabilitation programme in Chuadanga, a 25,000-sapling project priced hog plum, jamun and wood apple at Tk 30 each, olive at Tk 40, and mango and palm at Tk 60, with bamboo stakes at Tk 50 apiece. The same plants can be bought cheaper in the open market, and that difference is the supplier's margin. Getting in is not easy, though: that Chuadanga project called no open tender at all and took its material from the horticulture centre and BADC. Without an existing line to the upazila agriculture office, the forest department and the NGOs, a nursery never even hears that an allocation exists. Five villages in Manirampur, Jashore turn over more than Tk 50 crore of saplings a year, and Rangpur division has 216 registered and 844 unregistered nurseries. The work looks small; the market is not.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• Poly bags, grafting knives and tape, shade net, an irrigation pump and pipe, a sprayer, and a van or truck to move saplings.Equipment
• Seed, scion wood from mother trees, soil and compost. If these are not stocked before the season, the monsoon selling window is missed.Starting stock
• Trade licence from the union parishad, municipality or city corporation: form Tk 10, licence book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee Tk 100-60,000 by trade type, issued in 3-5 working days.Licence
• Nursery registration is done at the upazila agricultural extension office: the Rangpur region has 216 registered nurseries and 844 unregistered. Registration and a TIN are needed to supply government programmes. The fee and validity could not be verified here.Licence
• Grafting: air layering, cleft grafting and budding. A mistake in identifying the variety only shows up two years later when the tree fruits, and by then your name is gone across the whole area.Skill
• Good mother trees, seed and scion, plus suppliers of poly bags, compost and soil. The Forest Department's 101 social forestry nurseries across 62 districts and 334 plantation centres sell saplings cheaply.Supplier
• Flat land with irrigation, shade netting and truck access. Manirampur's nurseries run on 3 to 12 bighas, and four bighas lease for Tk 60,000 a year.Workspace

How the work runs

1. 1Pick the land: irrigable, able to be shaded, and reachable by truck from the road. Four bighas leases for Tk 60,000 a year in Manirampur.
2. 2Ask at the upazila agriculture office and the forest department about nursery registration. The Rangpur region has 216 registered nurseries against 844 unregistered, but supplying government programmes needs papers.
3. 3Take the trade licence from the union parishad or municipality. Billing a government office or an NGO needs both the licence and a TIN.
4. 4Decide what to raise, based on what is actually being planted around you: mango, jackfruit, guava, lemon, mahogany, palm. Manirampur grows over 300 varieties, but 10 or 15 is enough to start.
5. 5Fix your source of mother trees and good seed, and learn grafting. Grafted saplings fetch the higher price, and if the variety turns out wrong the buyer never comes back.
6. 6Fill the poly bags, lay them out in rows, and record which variety is in which row. Once they get mixed the whole consignment loses value.
7. 7Have the saplings ready for sale by May or June, before the rains. The tree plantation campaign and the tree fairs fall then, and so does most of the year's selling.
8. 8Keep visiting the upazila agriculture office, the forest department and local NGOs, and find out in advance how many saplings each programme needs. Chuadanga's 25,000-sapling project called no open tender at all, so without an inside line you never hear the allocation exists.
9. 9Get a written work order before any large supply: how many saplings, which variety, what height, delivery date and payment date. Quality complaints mean returns — about 800 saplings were sent back in Alamdanga.
10. 10Keep a roadside or bazar selling point. Retail brings cash in hand, and when a government bill is slow that cash is what keeps the nursery running.
11. 11Build wholesale links with nurseries in other districts. Manirampur's saplings reach almost every district, and that is how the big volumes move.

Sources

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

• কোথায় পাবেন চারা — ৬২ জেলায় ১০১টি সামাজিক বনায়ন নার্সারী ও প্রশিক্ষণ কেন্দ্র এবং ৩৩৪টি সামাজিক বনায়ন বাগান কেন্দ্র

  Collected: 20 Nov 2018

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

What changed

No corrections have been published yet.

Questions and answers

No questions yet. Be the first to ask.