PROFILE: VICTORIAN ALPS NURSERY
New member profile: Victorian Alps Nursery The Victorian Alps Nursery specialises in the production and propagation of alpine flora, making it a unique offering in Australia. What makes your Nursery unique? We propagate a large variety of alpine and sub-alpine species for rehabilitation and restoration projects at all major Ski resorts, including Mt Buller, Falls Creek and Mt Hotham and Perisher, Alpine National Park, Mt Buffalo NP, Kosciuszko and NSW National Parks (Perisher Valley). Our core work provides plants for alpine ski fields and National Parks. Plants grown for resort management boards and ski companies are used in the revegetation of ski runs, snow and soil stabilisation, village landscaping and recovery following infrastructure works. We also supply plants for peatland bog restoration, bushfire recovery, threatened species habitat (a large component of our work is to grow food plants for the Mountain Pygmy Possum), and supporting habitat restoration programs. We are the only supplier of local provenance indigenous plants to Victorian alpine areas. We grow up to 200 different species and hold the only indigenous seed bank for use in conservation for Victoria’s alpine region. It is also the only seedbank for lowland valley species surrounding the alpine areas of the North-East. We are the leading supplier of indigenous lowland plants for revegetation projects in valleys surrounding the mountains. Clients include various Landcare groups, such as, Upper Ovens Valley, Myrtleford, Mudgegonga, Omeo/Benambra, Mitta Mitta and Swifts Creek/Ensay. Our staff collect all seed and cutting material used for propagation, maintaining seedbanks for each mountain or provenance.
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GROUNDSWELL FEBRUARY 2022
An exciting part of the job is experimenting in germination trials of alpine species, many of which had never been grown under cultivation before. This involves many different methods, including stratification for different time periods. We successfully propagate species once thought difficult or impossible to grow and continue to refine our techniques and trial new species.
What is your stock range? Any local plant requested to order including trees, shrubs, herbs and wildflowers, grasses and bog species. We also sell a selection of non-local natives for the home gardener. The slowest alpine species can take up to two years to produce for sale (in 70mm square tube) so planning ahead is a must and predicting future orders can be challenging, as much of the work is funded by grants.
Who is a typical customer? We mostly grow to contract for land managers, such as, alpine resorts management, ski lift companies, ski lodge owners, Parks Victoria, DELWP, catchment management authorities, Landcare Groups and local council. We sell to the public by appointment only.
Do you have any longer-term plans? We would like to increase the capacity of our seedbank and collection team to establish a seedbank in North-East Victoria that a wide variety of land managers in the north east can benefit from. Currently we only collect for use for our own propagation needs.
