Gardening Club News

This week our Gardening Club session was at the  Bayside Community Nursery. 

They are knowledgeable and passionate about indigenous planting and grow and supply a wide range of beautiful Bayside indigenous species. The Nursery, located at 315–317 Reserve Road in Cheltenham is run by volunteers and led by Julie and Jim.

The students were dropped off by their parents at the Nursery at 7:45am Ms Collins and Mrs Murphy were waiting for them. We were greeted by Jim, who showed us around to the back and introduced us to Julie. 

We learnt that ‘native’ plants are ones grown in the country but ‘indigenous’ plants are from a particular region or area. The nursery specialises in plants that grow in the Bayside area. These plants grow well in the sandy soil and in our particular weather patterns including handling salty winds from the bay. They showed us the ‘igloos’ where they grow their seedlings and cuttings and explained about using perlite as the growing medium.

For this visit Julie wanted to teach us about propagating from cuttings. First she showed us the diagram and explained that the branches from the plants have nodules and how to measure and trim. Then we dipped the cuttings into the hormone gel and stuck them in the tray of perlite and coir (coconut fibre).

Time went quickly and we had a lot of fun learning from Julie who invited us to come back in about 4 weeks to see how our cuttings go. (but we will have to see about that 😉)

At around 8:20am we started packing away and Kate McDonell and Ms Collins drove the students back to school in their cars, ready for the regular start to the school day. 

Our aim of this enterprise engaging with the nursery is to:

• learn about indigenous plants of our local area
• learn about suitable plants to revegetate the area where our new shade sails have been erected at school and 
• develop within our students the understanding of the benefit of volunteering and contributing towards community greater good.

It was so much fun learning a lot and we look forward to going back again next time. The girls were fabulous ambassadors for our school and a joy to work with.

Stay tuned for future updates

from the Gardening Green Thumbs and Ms Collins and Mrs Murphy