In their element: Presenter Millie Ross, Cathy Olive and Charlotte Langman in the Euroa Arboretum nursery.
The Euroa Arboretum’s award-winning grasslands caught the eye of Gardening Australia last year.
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Its team filmed last October and the segment will air on the ABC and iView this Friday, April 26.
It was exciting for staff and volunteers to meet presenter Millie Ross and to be involved during the filming. Gardening Australia not only told the story of the seedbank but the experience of volunteering at the arboretum and what has been achieved at the grounds — from a sheep paddock and Hume depot until now.
Taking a break: Gardening Australia films arboretum volunteers during morning tea.
Situated on the left as you head out of Euroa towards Melbourne, the arboretum is a beautiful place to relax and commune with plants and birds, to fish, take a self-guided tour or have a picnic. However, the grounds are just one part of the arboretum.
The Euroa Arboretum is an incorporated, tax-deductible charity governed by a committee of management. It is run by a crew of talented staff committed to landscape restoration and a fabulous group of volunteers who provide support each week in the seedbank, nursery, grounds and local environs.
The Goulburn Broken Seedbank is part of the Euroa Arboretum. It has a small core of staff and volunteers who collect and process native seed from throughout the Goulburn Broken Catchment. The seed is for sale to nurseries throughout Victoria and direct seeding for large-scale revegetation projects.
Development manager Cathy Olive said with the growing demand for biodiversity, revegetation and carbon abatement projects, they had run into a problem — they didn’t have enough seed.
To reach the targets, the seedbank needs more efficient ways to produce seeds at volume.
“The nice part is that we can grow it — seed orchards are the way to go, to help build our supply,” she says.
One of the arboretum’s key goals is to raise funds to develop large-scale seed production areas in Avenel and Euroa for growing climate-adapted seed. Seed production areas will increase seed volume required to meet future landscape restoration while reducing the need to harvest from wild populations.
The seed also goes back into the arboretum nursery, which produces more than 70,000 plants a year. People can order large numbers of plants for property revegetation or visit the retail nursery from noon to 4pm on a Monday or Thursday afternoon to buy plants (until sold out).
Gardening Australia has wrapped all this up into a segment to be screened this Friday — the ‘Reseeding Euroa’ story with Millie will go to air on the ABC on Friday, April 26 at 7:30pm and will be repeated the following Sunday at 1:30pm. The episode will also be available to watch on iView, from 7am on the day it goes to air.
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