By Mikayla van Loon
Mooroolbark’s Candlebark Indigenous Nursery president has made an emotional plea to Yarra Ranges Council for support at a recent council meeting.
Bernard Heinze attended the meeting on Tuesday 14 March to give an update about the Nursery and said “we have a problem.”
“We will have to close the nursery down by about September of this year. We’ve run out of money. We will have run out of money,” he said.
“The problem occurred because of Covid, we couldn’t get the volunteers. We are all volunteers, except we do employ three people part time.
“Without those people who have those particular skills for raising the indigenous plants we, the volunteers, don’t have that same basic understanding. It’s a skilled job raising these indigenous plants. We go out into the forests, sides of the roads and collect the seeds and cuttings.”
Eleven years ago Candlebark Nursery shifted from a property in Croydon to the corner of Hull Road and Taylors Road in Mooroolbark which is owned by the Department of Transport and Planning.
“The problem we have is we have to pay almost $1,000 a month to rent the place from the Department of Transport,” Mr Heinze said.
“It suited us, it was big enough and all we have from them is the piece of ground but we have put all our buildings on it, our big poly houses and we produce thousands of plants.
“A lot of those plants are used by the council in the ribbons of green but of course Maroondah Council also uses them and other councils.”
Mr Heinze said the Nursery is not only the major supplier to councils but advises people on the best native plants to plant and has in the last year employed people with disabilities.
“We employ a number of people who have mental and physical problems.They are so good at doing those things that we cherish them,” he said.
Councillor Andrew Fullagar asked if the council was able to help solve one problem would that help fix the other to which Mr Heinze said yes.
“We are gradually getting volunteers and we have asked Eastern Volunteers and we are training up younger people,” Mr Heinze said.
“That $1,000 a month, we’ve asked the Department of Transport to reduce it and they said no, that’s the market value.”
Mayor Jim Child, on the request of Cr Fiona McAllister, said he would sign an advocacy letter to the department to waive the rental fee for Candlebark.
Cr Tim Heenan thanked Mr Heinze for his presentation and the work he and the rest of the volunteers do to renew indigenous plants in the Yarra Ranges.
“I congratulate you on the many years of work that you’ve done and I know how hard and how important it is to have indigenous plants go back to where they came from,” he said.
“We will need to make that advocacy work and sincerely hope the State government will understand but it still leaves it to volunteers. So I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that a surge of people might come forward to do this very important work.”
