City to publish community nursery’s native plant guide

Four years of research into growing native plants by volunteers at Geraldton’s Community Nursery, will be published in an e-booklet.

The Waggrakine nursery has been running since 2004 and has 50 volunteers helping out four days a week.

Over the years, volunteers have documented how to collect and propagate local native plant species, often through trial and error or word of mouth.

The extensive knowledge will soon be made available to the wider community after the City of Greater Geraldton received a $7770 grant from the WA State Natural Resource Management program.

Nursery and natural areas officer Wendy Payne said the Native Plant Propagation Guide would be available by the end of April.

“The volunteers are thrilled that their research and knowledge is being captured and compiled into an e-booklet,” she said.

“The sharing of this knowledge with the broader community has the potential to both significantly and positively influence biodiversity outcomes across the State, by ensuring bushland and coastal areas can be revegetated with a large variety of local native species.”

About 22,000 seedlings have been grown at the nursery this year.

New techniques and research have allowed volunteers to propagate 4000 of those plants successfully, including 11 species that are new to the nursery.

Mayor Shane Van Styn said the choice to publish the research in an e-booklet instead of printing out hard copies was to make it easily accessible. “E-booklets make sense, they can be quickly updated and easily shared,” he said.

“Our volunteers have documented a large amount of knowledge on how to collect and propagate local native plant species, which must be made more accessible to the community.

“This will ensure our Community Nursery, and other nurseries from across the State, can continue to provide a wide variety of native plants for revegetation projects.”

Development of the guide is supported by Central Regional TAFE, The Drylands Foundation and the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions’ Herbarium.