Indigenous Plants and Stormwater

An outing today to a non-commercial indigenous plant nursery, and to a stormwater harvesting project.

First up the nursery, where volunteers grow indigenous plants for Ballarat Council, for re-vegetation projects, and the like:

 It was interesting to compare with our tree-growing experiences for the TreeProject. The nursery has the advantage of shade houses and green houses to give their plants the optimum growing conditions:

 Most of the plants looked a bit sad for winter, but will perk up again once spring arrives.

One plant that was looking good is this native storksbill, Pelargonium australe:

It has been allowed to self-seed and spread in an area at one end of the nursery, and is growing there very happily. It has flowers just about all year apparently, and forms a nice round bush. Will have to see if we can get hold of some for the garden.

The second part of our excursion was to the North Gardens Wetlands.

Not an easy sign to read, but basically stormwater is collected, goes through gross pollutant traps, then several basins where sediment can settle, before the water ends up in Lake Wendouree.

The settling basins have provided areas frequented by many waterbirds, and although I didn't manage to photograph any of them,

 about 30 species of bird were identified by members of the group on our walk around the project.