We had a great team from Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) join us on Tuesday to get the last of our 4000 plants in the ground this year. Mike is showing them our “deep hole” planting technique and the team got on with the job with gusto.
Whoopee! Planting is finished for 2016. It has been a very busy patch getting 4000 local provenance seedlings in the ground over 7 weeks. This past week we had an excellent Green Army team – a team of young people sign up for a 6 month period to work and to learn all sorts of skills at the same time.
Today was a beautiful Sunday and a fantastic team of 17 people gathered to water plants and collect seed at Cottesloe Native Garden. A monoculture of weedy Victorian teatree had been cleared from the site a year ago.
During October 2006 I did a plant survey at Cottesloe Native Garden with the naturalist Robert Powell. We found only one silky scaevola (Scaevola anchusifolia) whereas several plants had been recorded approximately 15 years earlier.
After two weeks of intensive planting in May and June we now have 3,500 new plants in our natural areas. We had some terrific help from Conservation Volunteers Australia, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Rio Tinto and for the first time the Green Army. The extra hands meant we could achieve so much more.
Planting has started for 2013 and we got off to a great start with an excellent team of volunteers from Pricewaterhouse Coopers who gave us a day of work!