Nursery News: Sorry, no Choccy Bickies!
You may have heard, a while ago we were fortunate enough to get a grant from the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife for the construction of a community nursery at Merriwa. Well, after lots of issues with location and planning and job changes for some of the crew organising all this which I’m really not getting into, the nursery is now more or less functioning. It still needs some work and some planting around the outskirts. There are plants there and they’re growing.
Here’s a few pics of the process of erecting the shadehouses. The shadehouses are 6.1 x 4m from Aussie Shade Houses (no, we’re not getting sponsorship) and are fairly easily put together with a bucket of soapy water and a rubber mallet (and of course the instructions, ours got wet and were a little hard to read but once it was figured out, it went more or less smoothly).
Now that I know how it’s all put together each shadehouse would take a couple of people a few hours to construct.
Yes, that’s the famous silo with the sheep painted on it.
Automatic irrigation system in operation.
I’ve always thought the guys at Trees in Newcastle did well with their acronym but I thought something a little more creative was called for to establish a nursery in the Upper Hunter area, given that I’ve got a nursery at Muswellbrook and one at Merriwa maybe I can use the name Trees in Muswellbrook/Trees at Merriwa, the acronym has a nice name, don’t you think.
We’re mostly growing Upper Hunter species though depending on seed availability, will also grow Lower Hunter species.
And we’d like to thank Upper Hunter Shire Council, Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife, Hunter Local Land Services, Merriwa Landcare and Merriwa Greenthumbs for all their assistance in getting this up and running.
Nursery operation hours
Merriwa
Thursday morning 9:30am – 12:30pm (ish)
3rd Saturday morning of the month from 9:30ish
Muswellbrook
Wednesday 9:15am – 12:30pm (ish)
First Saturday morning of the month from 9ish
For more information on what we’re growing, how to establish a nursery, how to volunteer or just general enquiries flick an email to: paul@hunterlandcare.org.au.