Each year Central Coast Council’s nursery at Erina provides between 10,000 and 15,000 tubes for planting at your sites through the Environmental Volunteer Program. The nursery also produces many more plants for use on other Council projects.

Have you ever wondered where these plants come from and the process involved? And which stages of this production have volunteer involvement?

It all starts with a seed or cutting, and when it comes to the local native species that go to your sites these are collected from our bushland and coastal reserves. And yes, there is a volunteer group that collect these seeds and cuttings and provide them to the nursery.

The seed collecting group meet on the first Tuesday of each month. The locations vary but a reserve is always chosen to tie back in with the seed and cutting needs of the nursery. The volunteers meet at 9am to go for a walk through the site collecting seeds, cuttings, and even some plants like groundcovers which are then brought back to the nursery. This is a great way to see different sites and to improve your native plant identification skills. 

There are nursery volunteer groups working every Monday and Wednesday morning at the Erina Depot. Our team Officers work with these volunteers to carry out all aspects of the production cycle from sorting and storing incoming seed into the nurseries seed bank, sowing seed when the time is right, processing any cuttings material, then following the plant production cycle through from potting up seedlings and cuttings, carrying out maintenance weeding, etc. 

Amongst the nursery volunteer groups there are those who come along every week and others who just come along every now and then. Collectively these volunteers spend over 400 hours working at the nursery and produce over 20,000 plants each year. Without them we would not be able to supply the plants that go out through our program. 

If you would like more information about either the seed collecting or nursery volunteer groups, or would like to become involved with either or both of them, please contact us through environmentalvolunteering@centralcoast.nsw.gov.au