Category: Nursery

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Nursery

New Video: Behind the scenes of our Seed Bank!

In this new video, our Nursery Manager, Sarah, talks through the seed collection process at our nursery.
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We have been collecting provenance-specific seeds at Australian Ecosystems since the company began. Stored in our seed bank are 400-500 different species of native and locally indigenous plants, across about 1400 seed lots.

Provenance is the understanding of the geology of the different places we collect seed from. The different soil and rock type of each area across Victoria can have an influence on the genetic makeup of the species.

Honouring the provenance-specific needs of your area improves the chances of survival of plants. They will be the best genetic fit for your soil type and environmental conditions. We put heaps of care into collecting, preparing, and storing our hundreds of seed lots for optimal quality of our plants.
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These are some of the steps behind collecting seed for our diverse native and indigenous plant nursery:
1. Early in the season, our collectors head out to assess the ripening process and availability of species. 
2. When populations ripen, our collectors return to harvest each species across different regions
3. As the seed lots come back, we record all of the information about the site and population collected from.
4. Processing time! Each species needs diferent treatment to ensure seed will be viable. Our team have a wealth of knowledge of each varieties’ requirements.

​Explore our plant availability and order plants today through Evergreen Connect

Categories
General Nursery

Our nursery highlighted as a stellar educator and employer!

​Thanks to the Nursery and Garden Industry Victoria for including a write-up about our nursery in the latest edition of Groundswell!

We have received the Employer of the Year award from Holmesglen TAFE in 2020 and 2019, showing our commitment to our apprentices and passion for educating future generations of horticulturalists.

We opened our nursery almost 25 years ago to address the need for native wetland plants to improve Melbourne’s waterways, and are so happy to continue doing just that to this day.

Check out this article to read more about our educational opportunities for apprentices, how we build a great community in our workplace, and our sustainability initiatives.


You can read the full article here

Categories
Nursery

Sustainability @ AE: Reusable and returnable plant trays!

Over the years, the nursery industry has worked on many sustainable innovations including reducing and recycling plastic waste. From our experience working on our large landscaping projects, we saw the need to implement circular economy principles by reducing plastic waste and moving away from single-use plastic pots to developing our own multi-plant trays.

We design and manufacture our own unique moulded 200CC and 600CC trays that after use can be sterilised in our pot washer and re-used many times. Once their lifecycle is complete, they can then be recycled into another plastic product.

Before delivering your plants from our nursery, we put the trays through our popper machine, which lifts the plant out of the cell for easy handling. The trays can be clipped onto planting belts for fast planting, and as a bonus you no longer have to collect all the single-use plastics after a job! This speeds up planting efficiencies and helps with OH&S. To incentivise our clients to return trays to us, we offer a deposit refund on all returned trays. It’s almost like we are paying you to recycle!

We believe that once you start using our moulded multi-use plant trays, you’ll enjoy all the benefits and efficiencies they bring. If you are a landscaper, you know the importance of efficient planting of large amounts of plants, while reducing the waste produced in your operations and time spent cleaning up at the end of the project. Feel free to get in touch with our nursery now for a sustainable solution and quality native and indigenous plants!

Categories
Nursery

Native plants as food, medicine, and tools for First Nations People

We were privileged to have Christopher Jakobi come down to our Nursery, on Bunurong country, to talk about native plants and First Nations culture. Jakobi is a Gunditjimara and Djab Wurrung man who works as the cultural and sustainability education programs coordinator at the Royal Botanic Gardens. He shared many insights about the ways that some of the plants that we grow at our nursery have been used historically and in the present by First Nations people in the area.

We have been growing native and indigenous plants for over twenty years, and during this time have amassed a collection of plants that can be used for food, tools, medicine, and various ecological applications. While we have extensive experience propagating these plants for ecosystem restoration projects, we lack the knowledge that First Nations people have amassed over tens of thousands of years of cultivating and consuming them.

Along with their traditional uses, Jakobi shared his first-hand experience utilising native plant materials for food, tools, and medicine as well as cultural burning. He also shared with us his insights into the burgeoning ‘bushfood’ industry and the strides being made in commercialising these plants as crops for the culinary industry. Our nursery is proud to support some of these trials on commercial cultivation of some native plants for food for traditional owner groups. Jakobi’s talk highlighted the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing between native plant nurseries and First Nations community groups, and we look forward to working on this within our own operations into the future.

Categories
Nursery

Employer of the Year

We are extremely chuffed to have received the 2020 Employer of the Year Award for Nurseries, from Holmesglen TAFE.

This is a testament to our nursery as a place for educating the next generation of horticulturalists and biodiversity restoration professionals.

Our staff work very hard, growing millions of plants per year for over 20 years. These plants are sent out to be planted at a variety of projects across the Greater Melbourne region, in landscapes from residential to large ecological conservation projects. We are very proud of the positive impact our nursery has on the environment, and the work we do to proliferate and preserve the locally indigenous species of areas across Victoria.
Categories
Nursery

Landscape Lines

The Australian Ecosystems nursery is currently expanding to offer our new Landscape Line range.
Our range of almost 50 plant varieties have been carefully curated to include commonly used landscaping lines for the residential landscaping market.

This range has been developed in our unique and more affordable 12x 600cc trays which has these advantages:

  • Less than half the size of the 140/150mm stock whilst providing a plant similar in presentation impact to the standard 140mm pot.
  • These multipack trays are re-used to reduce plastic waste streams and can speed up planting as they allow planters to handle and carry more plants at a time. Also reducing clean-up.
  • These 600cc plants are cheaper than 140mm stock allowing for a greater margin to marketing channel suppliers 

Click here to order online from Evergreen Connect.
 For any contract grow requests and other enquiries, email us at nursery@australianecosystems.com.au

Categories
Nursery

Plant Brokerage

Can’t find the plants you seek? Need a complex plant list pulled together for your project?

Our nursery can supply plants to the landscaping and building industry with our convenient plant brokerage service.

We are proud members of NGIV (Nursery & Garden Industry of Victoria) and through our strong wholesale networks can source a wide range of plants and plant formats at the highest possible quality. Our pricing is very competitive because we can supply without the retail mark-ups and deliver straight to you in one delivery or as required, speeding up your planting project on site.​

​Please email us at nursery@australianecosystems.com.au to discuss what we can do for you.