The last seedling is planted for 2013!
It is always a good feeling to have finished planting for the year! We dug the last hole and watered in the last seedling on July 12th. Since then the plants have received some good falls of rain so it all augurs well, to date, for a good survival rate this year. Some years we have 80% survival but other years when we have poor rains, problems with rabbits and vandalism of our sites the survival rate of plants is much lower. Fingers crossed for this lot and let’s hope that people and dogs will keep off the plants!
Cottesloe Coastcare’s regular ‘first Sunday of the month’ working bee was held at Mudurup Rocks on July 7th. A great team of workers planted 240 seedlings at a difficult site, which is very exposed to the salt laden wind from the ocean, only metres away.We were delighted to welcome Susie and Simon Westlake with their kids,Tom and Marcus to the planting team. Susie is David and Lu Palandri’s daughter and Tom and Marcus are their grandchildren. David, who died in March this year was a highly respected CCA Life Member, an inaugural committee member and our group’s Treasurer for many years. We miss him. It was a great joy to have the Westlake family with us. The boys sent these notes for our blog. A big thank you to Tom and Marcus.
Our final planting session was at Grant Marine Park on 12th July.
Unfortunately there has been a considerable amount of damage to plants at Grant Marine Park. It is mostly from children running up and down the dunes and destroying the plants. I often speak to parents about this damage but unfortunately some adults are not interested in our work towards the recovery of the natural environment and our efforts to provide habitat for birds and lizards.

Nikki Pursell (Cottesloe’s Sustainability Officer) and Kate planting on the dunes
We also think it looks much better than the weedy waste land it used to be! (You can see the photo below how Grant Marine Park looked when we first started our volunteer work there in 2004 and the same site a few years later).

Grant Marine Park in 2003

Grant Marine Park in 2011
Thanks again to everyone involved in planting 2,500 local provenance seedlings this year. Thanks to the people who helped collect and clean the seed; to the nurseries who grew our plants; to all those who put in long hours of hand weeding at our sites; to Pricewaterhouse Coopers for all their wonderful work on the dunes and for their financial support; thanks also to Town of Cottesloe for all their assistance; to Kate Sputore (our fantastic Coastcare Officer) for all her support and a final thanks to all our members and friends for their dedicated work and morale boosting good humour.