Last year the picnic bench at the Bridge Lookout disappeared and, thanks to Ellie’s efforts, the Botanical Society kindly agreed to donate one. We asked for delivery on the day of our monthly meeting so we would have enough able bodies to mix some concrete to make this bench a little more difficult to remove. […]

The monthly meeting is coming up and we need to make more space for trees so we tackled a stretch beyond the Cycad patch and, rather than piling the branches in heaps, we now use them as a perimeter barrier and that works better. First though Neil came in to see if there is any

During the various walks with Adrian Odgers and Woodridge one of the stories he tells is about the resemblance between a telephone book and the paperbark tree. Well, now we have proof. Hardly a month after the fire new shoots appear and soon we will have a lush tree again. Talking about proof, we can

After all the gloom and doom lately after the fires the Reserve showed itself from its best side today. Already in the way in the blanket over Ladyslipper was something special to see. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, from the new growth on the Sterculia to the flowering Pelargonium, all too beautiful

Our monthly meeting was geared towards planting trees in the arboretum, 36 to be exact. It is so good to see some greenery amongst the scorched earth. We had done our best to clear a large enough area and in the process created quite a heap. Fortunately we had a good turnout including some strong

Today we concentrated on the Cycad patch in the arboretum. Most of them are burnt but, as they are resprouters there are already some small leaves emerging on some of them. There is further not much we can do apart from clrearing out the burnt branches, Behind the arboretum it looks like the sign can

We will have our hands full for a good while to come to sort the arboretum out and still maintain the nursery and the hacking program. We can already see plenty of aliens and other unwanted plants coming up. There will be millions of keurbooms, Podalyrias, Chrysanthemoides in a few months time. We took a

We are making a big effort to clear a lot of bunt branches, shrubs and trees in the arboretum to make place for some new trees. Cathy is busy clearing away some of the Erica remains. while I busy myself with the chainsaw and Widdringtonias for Ellie to clean up and Rob gets rid of

We are a bit over the initial dismay about the fire and are making plans to turn it into an opportunity to make some changes to the arboretum. First priority is still to secure the water supply. It must have been quite a blaze with all the grass in the rondavel to burn the buried

We were forewarned as we were notified through social media that a section of the Reserve had burned on Friday but we were not prepared to see the devastation it had caused to all our hard work with the Arboretum, the pipe line, newly planted trees and various signage. It may be a case of