After demarcation, the land must first be cleared of all rocks, stumps, trees and shrubs. Sometimes considerable earth works will be necessary for the construction of terraces. Drains should be built as early as possible to prevent rain from damaging the works. Great attention must be given to drainage, especially in nurseries on steep slopes. The object is to minimize erosion, while directing excess water away from the site. Drains should be built along the top edge and down the sides of the nursery.
Generally, nursery should be divided into rectangular blocks by permanent paths, about 1.8m wide. Those blocks are further divided by paths of 0.9m wide into smaller blocks which are subdivided into rectangular nursery beds by paths of 0.5m wide. Location of irrigation channels should also be kept in view so that they run along the paths.
In the hills, the wide of terraces should be sufficient to accommodate at least one bed in width and paths on both side of it. It should thus be at least 2 meter wide. The beds should be laid out with their length east to west so that they can be shaded against frost and sun without difficulty. If the terraces are to be used for seedbeds, the top soil must first be carefully collected and stored so that it can be redistributed after the earth works have been completed. This is not necessary where the terraces are to be used for stand-out beds for polypots. Terraces should slop very gently inwards and with a slight fall along their length, so that water flows to the back of the terrace (where a small drain may be dug) and then along it into a main drain. Water should be finally be directed away from the nursery in gently sloping channels to natural water-courses or to areas where it cannot cause erosion or other damage.
In the nurseries made for extensive mechanized plantations, there should be provision for wide roads on which tractors with trailers can ply. Thus, each nursery bed should have a tractor road on one side of its length and an irrigation channel on the other. In other words, there should be a tractor road after every two beds so that polythene bagged plants can be loaded from the bed directly on the trailer without any difficulty.
