Nursery and sapling production

Raising saplings in poly bags for sale. Retail pays the bills, but supplying government and NGO plantation programmes is the real income — mango saplings are priced at Tk 60 there.

Last reviewed: 19 September 2026
Version 1

Starting capital: ৳50,000 – ৳5,00,000
Manpower: 1 – 8 people
First sale: 30 – 365 days
Break-even: 6 – 18 months
Kind of work: Farm · Medium difficulty

About the business

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

Item	Range	Evidence
Monthly working capital	৳15,000 – ৳80,000	Editorial estimate
Selling price	৳30 – ৳60 / unit	Official source
Variable cost	৳8 – ৳25 / unit	Editorial estimate
Gross margin	40% – 75%	Disputed
Time to first revenue	30 – 365 days	Editorial estimate
Break-even time	6 – 18 months	Editorial estimate
Cash cycle	45 – 300 days	Editorial estimate
Waste / loss	10% – 25%	Editorial estimate
Daily capacity	20 – 150	Editorial estimate

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 is done

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.
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.
3Take the trade licence from the union parishad or municipality. Billing a government office or an NGO needs both the licence and a TIN.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
11Build wholesale links with nurseries in other districts. Manirampur's saplings reach almost every district, and that is how the big volumes move.

Seasons

JanNormal
FebNormal
MarNormal
AprNormal
MayHigh
JunHigh
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OctNormal
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DecNormal

HighNormalLow

Where it works well

Strong fitChuadanga · The district horticulture centre and BADC source government programme saplings here; a 25,000-sapling programme ran across four upazilas in 2025-26.
Strong fitDhaka · The biggest retail market — rooftop gardens, tree fairs and city buyers — though land is expensive, so most saplings are brought in from outside.
Strong fitJashore · The five villages around Kuada Bazar in Manirampur turn over more than Tk 50 crore of saplings a year, grow over 300 varieties and ship to almost every district.
Strong fitKushtia · Eighteen nurseries around Kubarhat have supplied one company's plantation programme for years, so the institutional supply market already exists here.
Strong fitRangpur · The region has 216 registered and 844 unregistered nurseries, about 6,500 workers employed directly and some 50,000 people involved along the chain.
PossibleChapai Nawabganj · Mango country, so demand for grafted mango saplings is highest here and they are sent out to other districts as well.
PossibleDinajpur · Demand for fruit saplings is growing and land is cheap, but the big buying cities are far away.
PossibleGazipur · The Dhaka market is close and land is cheaper; being next to forest land, forest department programmes are frequent here too.
PossibleMeherpur · Sits beside the Chuadanga-Jashore nursery belt and can plug into the same supply chain.
PossibleRajshahi · Mango and orchard country: every new orchard needs thousands of saplings at once.

Risks and cautions

HighLate payment: In government and NGO supply the saplings go out first and the bill clears later, by which time the wages and the land rent have already been paid. A complaint about quality means returns and a held-up bill — about 800 saplings were returned as substandard in Alamdanga.
MediumSpoilage: A sapling is alive. Stop the irrigation, let flood water in or hit a bad heat spell and whole rows die, taking the season's work with them. Bags broken in transit kill the plants too.
HighDependency: The big money comes from government and NGO plantation programmes, but the route in is not open. Chuadanga's 25,000-sapling project called no open tender and took its material from the government horticulture centre and BADC. Private nurseries never hear that an allocation exists, and one season without an order leaves every sapling raised sitting on the ground.
HighDemand: The selling window is only four or five months, mostly the monsoon planting season. What does not sell then outgrows its bag, loses value or is thrown away — while the land rent and the wages carry on through the rest of the year.
MediumOther: Free sapling distribution undercuts private nurseries. In August 2026 forest officials in Kushtia were accused of collecting a tobacco company's free saplings and selling them — the nursery owner said 35,000 saplings were taken, the forest department said 14,000. When that happens, a nursery that paid to raise its stock cannot compete.

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