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Old Coach Road
Nursery

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The nursery was put in shortly after we began the project to help with propagation of local natives. Recently it has been expanded and a watering system and sun shade added.

Early Nursery

The early nursery was built by the property owner to provide us a location for our plants.

Nursery Expansion

Putting in star pickets fencing the gate
Eventually the original nursery needed expansion. Additional star pickets and wire netting were added.

Putting in star pickets
The finished product.

Adding a Watering System

a hose was wedged into the chicken wire as the original method of water the garden poly pip was put around the nursery and connected to a hose the system in place, watering the nursery
The original water system consisted of a hose wedged in the fence. We put in a poly pipe system connected to a timer.

The watering timer since failed prior to a heatwave and remained open training the main water tank for the property and causing a 98% mortality in the nursery costing us between $5000-8000 in lost stock if we were to replace it.

This is a classic lesson in failure of good permaculture design. There was A function – watering over summer; performed by only ONE element – an automatic watering system (one timer, one tap, one hose, one tank). Failure in this ONE element killed the nursery AND drained the main tank for the property.

Good permaculture designs demands that every function is performed by multiple elements. We could have installed a second tank, line and timer, even a second set of sprinklers. This would have incurred a significant cost but less than the value of the lost nursery stock.

Fortunately the property had a second main tank which filled when the first over flowed and acted as an emergency reserve, so we could access water immediately despite the loss of the main tank's water.

We are now developing an alternative watering system using smaller water tanks not connected to the main tank or line and wicking style beds so rain water and tank water will be captured and not wasted.

Adding Shade Cloth

open area in shad cloth nursery covered in shade cloth
Shade cloth was then added to help protect plants from the summer sun.

improve shade cloth now enables walk in
The shade cloth was improved prior to the 2011 summer allowing walk in access and a weed proff layer was placed on the floor.