Decades of plant propagation experience

Amanda Shade (Nursery Curator & Trainee Coordinator)

The Kings Park Nursery provides an integral link in the chain from the field to the final product of plant production. Since it was established in 1962 (several years before the Western Australian Botanic Garden opened) it has not deviated from its focus of striving for excellence in the propagation and cultivation of Western Australian flora.

Our strength is the team’s ability to experiment and think ‘outside the box’ when applying technical horticultural practices and perhaps most importantly, document findings. This is done so that others may replicate what we find as the best practice for the propagation of species that may be rare, temperamental, or new to cultivation.

This is how we expand the capacity of the restoration community to grow and plant more species.

Spring in the Kings Park Nursery. Photo: Dave Blumer

Nursery staff in 2015 inspect Grammosolen odgersii subsp. occidentalis plants. From left Amanda Shade, Krystel Field, Fernanda Veraldo and Holley Ardron. Photo: Dave Blumer

The nursery produces 50,000 to 60,000 plants a year for essential programs within managed land at Kings Park and Bold Park, such as botanic garden displays, education, tree replacement, restoration and rehabilitation.

The team also assists in translocation and conservation programs (managed by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions) across different ecosystems around the State. The Nursery provides education, training and support for many industries including horticultural traineeships, work experience opportunities, threatened species researchers and Friends of Kings Park volunteer groups.

The team has decades of experience and specialises in propagating many Western Australian threatened species for translocation programs. Our role in the translocation process is not only to produce these plants, but to keep meticulous and important records of the provenance of material and aspects of propagation and establishment processes in the production of the plants. Diligent and accurate record keeping is essential for future reference, research and planning.

These threatened species have ranged in distribution from the Mid-West, Central and Southern Wheatbelt, Geraldton, Albany and the Stirling Range, Swan Coastal Plain, Perth Hills, Esperance and Busselton. Genera grown include Acacia, Banksia, Darwinia, Daviesia, Eremophila, Grevillea, Lambertia and Verticordia.

Besides horticultural techniques, it is important that the team learn as much as they can about where a species occurs naturally and the factors that may play a part in successful propagation and establishment processes – things like soil type, environmental conditions, life cycle, or how it reproduces. The more we can learn about a species before propagation, the better equipped we are at deciding what methods to apply, particularly when faced with limited material to work with, as is often the case with threatened flora.

Most plants are grown from seed and provided to the nursery as very small just-germinated seedlings. Those that have proved difficult to germinate are sometimes trialled for vegetative propagation.

For example, the critically endangered Grevillea calliantha (Foote’s Grevillea) grows in a limited area in the Mid-West and since 1997 the nursery team has grown and provided more than 1100 plants for its translocation. It has been successfully propagated from both seed and cuttings.

Grevillea calliantha (Foote’s Grevillea) seedlings produced for 2021 translocation. Photos: Dave Blumer

Grevillea calliantha (Foote’s Grevillea) flowers. Photos: Dave Blumer

While each method has its associated pros and cons, the preparation and monitoring of cuttings for species such as this one requires a lot of time and resources.

If propagation has never been previously tried, it may even require experimentation and manipulation of multiple variables to get the process right.

For Foote’s Grevillea, we spent a lot of time and effort to work out what was required in terms of quality and type of material, timing, hormone treatment, media and environmental conditions to guarantee successful propagation and translocation. These intensive efforts to generate plants of threatened species are important steps in meeting the goals of the UN Decade on Restoration.

DBCA Research Scientist Leonie Monks, with Kings Park’s new seed collector Matthew Stray and nursery staff member Fernanda Veraldo, pack a vehicle with threatened flora for transport to 2021 translocation sites in the Stirling Range National Park. Photo: Amanda Shade

The nursery team is proud of their contribution to the important aspects of the restoration of our urban woodlands and translocation of WA’s most threatened flora. We look forward to continuing this essential work for the next decade, as it is for the next generation of people and plants that we do this work.

The stats

Plant propagation started in 1962

50-60,000 plants produced annually

150+ horticultural trainees educated

Threatened species propagation for translocation started in 1997

82 critically endangered species propagated

32,500 tube stock planted in translocations