David Mansfield
Environmental Entrepreneur and Business Developer
David (Dave) Mansfield is the Business Manager and a Director of McDowells Herbal, where he ensures that all operations run seamlessly for both clients and staff.
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With more than 40 years of experience in senior management and director roles across private companies and NGOs, Dave brings a wealth of leadership expertise to McDowells, particularly from his career in resource management, agriculture, and horticulture. Dave has qualifications in Horticulture, Agriculture, Environmental Restoration and as an accredited trainer.
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Dave’s career began in horticulture, where he founded and directed Belltrees Nursery in Dural, NSW. Specialising in Australian rainforest plants, Belltrees became an iconic hub throughout the 1980s, renowned for horticultural innovation and for mentoring many of today’s leaders in environmental restoration and ecologically sustainable development.
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He went on to establish Ecoflora, a pioneering environmental revegetation and restoration company that contracted to many of Australia’s large infrastructure andcmining projects through the 1990s. Building on this, Dave was engaged by Greening Australia to manage the natural resource and landscape development of the Sydney Olympic Authority’s environmentally sensitive sporting venues, integrating indigenous landscapes and provenance plant species propagation and restorationfor the 2000 Olympic Games.
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Following this, Dave embarked on his agricultural career, developing a 1,500-acre cattle and sheep grazing property near Orange, NSW. In line with his entrepreneurial approach, he diversified the property with a 10,000-tree grafted walnut plantation and established a 5-acre hedge maze, show garden and accommodation to support an agritourism development. His adoption of deep-rooted perennials and no-till, direct drill cropping led to substantial gains in productivity and demonstrated his innovative approach to broad-acre land management.
Since joining his wife, Catherine McDowell, at McDowells Herbal, Dave has focused on guiding the company’s strategic growth, marketing, and operations. He was instrumental in the 2018 launch of McDowells’ ecommerce platform, which expanded the company’s reach to national and international markets. Today, alongside McDowells, Dave and Cath are also developing Winterwood Sport Horses — a
venture that brings together their shared passions for horses, health, and the environment.
Dave’s unique career path — spanning horticulture, ecological restoration, large-scale agriculture, and natural health — reflects his lifelong commitment to innovation, sustainability, and holistic wellbeing. His vision is to establish McDowells Herbal as a global leader in natural animal health and to promote Winterwood as a model demonstration farm for sustainable land and animal management.