The possibility of restoring an old and decadent Phormium tenax plantation was studied in an experiment conducted in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The responses to the treatments tested were initially small, but they grew progressively, so that in the third and last harvest the yield increase due to the best treatment (lime + manure + NPK fertilizer) reached 10.9 tons of leaves per hectare, corresponding to 196 per cent of the yield obtained in the control plots. The results indicate that the restoration is technically possible, but the experiment was not sufficiently prolonged to allow the study of the economical side of the method used.