Native Nursery
Overview
ECOSS Native Nursery is a small nursery located at ECOSS.
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You’re welcome to come and visit to purchase plants from Tuesday-Friday, or email (peterlorback@gmail.com) to find out what we have in stock or to place a bulk order. We have native grasses, trees and shrubs available.
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You can place an order for native tubestock for your garden, please allow time for your order to be prepared
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Price is $8 for a 6 inch pot and $3 per tubestock, or a box of 50 tubestock for $2.50 each.
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If staff are not in attendance, please deposit payment in the honesty box
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Upper Yarra Landcare members volunteer in the nursery to help propagate native plants to regenerate the local environment and to benefit our native fauna.
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You can also purchase locally produced Bio Char from our native nursery.
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Volunteers of All Abilities volunteer through the Crops for Community program, 4 days a week in the native nursery.
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The nursery aims to become financially self sufficient through sales to continue running these valuable community programs and local native regeneration
Pollination Place
Pollination Place is a collaborative space at Yarra Valley ECOSS, utilising approximately 0.5 hectares in the southern corner of ECOSS. Pollination Place has various projects running that cultivate community involvement, learning, and sustainability outcomes. Current projects include:
– Farmer Incubator’s Pop Up Garlic Farmers Project
– Community Viticulture Project
– Educational Biochar Project run with Crops for Community
– Silviculture Project
Each project is run by different individuals or groups on their own timeline, yet all projects seek to be socially and ecologically mutually beneficial. Pollination Place also includes the dam, which is an important asset to wildlife, plants, and to ECOSS projects.
Educational Biochar Project run with Crops for Community
With the establishment of the new council Biochar processing facility in Lysterfield, ECOSS is working alongside Yarra Valley Council and EarthSystems to deliver the Biochar education program through creating demonstration plots within Pollination Place. The biochar project aims to demonstrate the benefits of using biochar in agriculture and climate mitigation through the drawdown of carbon in soils. The program runs with Crops for Community, which has successfully been using the ECOSS community garden for multiple years, and has created opportunities for connection, learning, and greater food security in the Yarra Valley, while supporting local food relief programs.
Kylie Barnes: 5967 2416
eartheducation@ecoss.org.au
Biochar
ECOSS is becoming a supplier of locally sourced biochar. Yarra Ranges Council has collaborated with Earth Systems to build a large biochar facility on the old Lysterfield tip site. ECOSS has partnered with this project to facilitate the education program about biochar.
Biochar is a carbon-rich material made by burning biomass (wood, leaves and branches) in a carefully controlled low-oxygen process called pyrolysis. It is like charcoal but has particular properties that added to soil give improvements in soil and plant health.
Biochar has a long history of use in indigenous farming throughout West Africa and the Amazon rainforest where the incredible results can be seen even today. Many scientists believe this ancient agricultural technique has the potential to increase crop yields and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the same time. Instead of carbon dioxide being released during normal decomposition or open-air burning, the pyrolysis process locks carbon into a stable form that can be buried underground.
Biochar has a host of benefits to the soil in your garden and has the potential to increase your soil fertility. Biochar can help regenerate poor soil and can assist in improving the harvest in your vegetable garden.
Biochar is a soil additive, or enhancer, that helps soil to create, sustain, and replenish the growing environment for plants and organic life to thrive within. The structure of biochar provides a very large surface area, which holds water and nutrients and provides a home for beneficial soil microbes and mycorrhizal fungi.
ECOSS is establishing some biochar demonstration vegetable plots for visitors to see and has biochar available for purchase within the Yarra Valley for the broader community and farmers and gardeners.
Contact
General enquiries to info@ecoss.org.au or Direct enquiries to peterlorback@gmail.com.
