Myrtleford Community Garden members getting busy on native garden for pollinators

Myrtleford Community Garden (MCG) will develop a native garden with pollinator-friendly trees and shrubs after securing funding from the Wheen Bee Foundation’s 'Trees for Bees Community Tree Grants' program. MCG president, Paul Reser, said the group had wanted to include a native garden as part of the community garden for a long time, and the grant secured by member Gabrielle Crowley would now allow this to happen. Mr Reser said inmates from Beechworth Correctional Centre work on the garden each month and they had already started works to prepare the site. "We're looking to continue to rehabilitate the site and increase the diversity of plants," he said. "Not just the vegetables and fruits we grow, but also plants which will benefit the general environment and the native pollinators." Mr Reser said the program has been a true networking effort. "Wheen Bee Foundation supplied the plants, [additional] money was donated to us from the Commonwealth Bank to buy the tree guards and the Myrtleford Landcare group donated the tree stakes," he said. "A whole group of different community organisations have really come together to make the project go ahead." Several different types of tree varieties are set to be provided by the Buffalo River Nursery, Daryl Perkins and the Park Lane Nursery in Wangaratta, including the locally endangered Stony Bush Pea, River Wattle, Philotheca, River Bottlebrush, Canberra Gem and Mount Tamboritha Grevilleas, Xanthorrhoea Grass tree, Corea Reflexa, Crowea Exalata, Zanthorrea and Centaurea. "These are all native species, local to the area within a 20 kilometre radius of town," MCG member Therese Graham said. "We really want to create a place for people to visit. "Pull the community together, that's what this space is all about." Gabrielle Crowley's husband, David Gillieson, is helping with plant selection. He said The University of Third Age mosaicking group, of which he is also a member, is set to do a series of native bee mosaics to install after the pollinator-friendly garden is established. "We've got about six planned," he said. "[These] will be mounted on boulders at this new site here at the community garden. "We've got four mosaics nearly completed, so they'll be ready in the next few weeks to ornament the planting area." Individual planting projects have begun over recent weeks, with most projects expected to be completed by Saturday 31 October.

Myrtleford Community Garden members getting busy on native garden for pollinators

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