Andrea Lindsay is one of 40 wonderful volunteers who propagate Indigenous plants for revegetation at the Bellarine Secondary College & Bellarine Landcare Group Nursery.
Andrea is pictured here with the Nursery Coordinator, Fiona Love.
"Just after I moved to Drysdale, I made a great discovery — our own Landcare Indigenous plant nursery in the grounds of Drysdale Secondary College. Wow! Somewhere I can indulge my passion for plants and enjoy the best of company! Which is what I have been doing for several years now. Our nursery propagates over 250 local species and around 50,000 plants each year. Work is done by forty volunteers under the guidance of our lovely and knowledgeable coordinator, Fiona Love. Our volunteers are a talented lot too. They come from a variety of backgrounds and have many skills to share — as well as great conversation.
We collect seed or cuttings, plant, prick out seedlings into tubes, and commune with our baby plants while we weed and feed them. We also have a special, and ingenious group that works to maintain and upgrade our buildings. Members of the group have made structures to protect young plants from excessive heat and marauding birds, and are inventing new ways to keep hungry possums and rodents from snacking on seedlings. They are especially clever at giving new life to left over bits-and-pieces as useful equipment — conservation in practice!
Originally our peninsula was clothed in open forests and woodlands. By the 1850s, Melbourne was growing apace, with an insatiable appetite for firewood. Timber cutting crews cleared land and shipped the wood to Melbourne. By the 1870s residents were so concerned that they wrote to von Mueller, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, asking for tree seedlings to help re-afforest the bare paddocks. Von Mueler obliged by sending some American and European trees. Now days landholders are after the local species, including shrubs and ground cover plants, which our Nursery provides. They have learnt that these do best and nurture the birds, bats and other beasties that control pests.
Local gardeners also love our Indigenous plants. They are tough, beautiful, attract native wildlife, and can be mixed with exotic species if that is what they want. And increasingly, people keen on the idea of edible gardens, are discovering what our first people have known for millennia — many native plants are good eating. Come sustained rain, and our plants will be flying out the door and into the ground. It is sooooo satisfying to be part of a success story and achieving something truly good for our land.
Our Nursery is a partnership with the Bellarine Secondary College, and is located on Belchers Road, Drysdale, and is open from 9am-3pm on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and the last Sunday of the month 10 am- 1 pm. If volunteering in the nursery interests you, just think — you can spend your hours growing plants, learning, enjoying good company and being free to wear old clothes in public!
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