In July 2024, the Natural Resources Conservation Trust awarded  $165,000  over two years to the Euroa Arboretum for stage 1 at Avenel of their Growing Native Seed Orchard Strategy. This forms part of the $370,000 project “Growing Climate Adapted Seed for the Goulburn Broken Catchment”.

The Goulburn Broken Indigenous Seedbank – Growing seed strategy aims to supply climate adapted, genetically diverse seed for large scale restoration goals.

The Trust’s stage 1 investment is part of a long term strategy developed by Euroa Arboretum that aims to:

• Establish 20 hectares of new seed production areas across 3 sites.
• Build a new seedbank facility at Euroa Arboretum to increase efficiencies and storage.
• Upgrade existing intensive seed production facilities at Euroa Arboretum.

To date $7,835  has been raised from donations towards ‘Seed for the Future’. We thank all of those who have donated!

We would like to acknowledge the support from Goulburn Valley Water, NRCT, GBCMA and contributions from Cargill.

Read our Seed Strategy

During August- September 2024, the Euroa Arboretum Bush Crew were down at the Avenel SPA site to commence works, Site prep has involved 2 days of slashing down the rows, and spraying weed competition in these rows using knapsack spot spray for sparse patches of Phalaris and the trailer spray unit where the Phalaris and onion grass is particularly dense.
They have also done some spray prep of onion grass along the eastern boundary fence. It is this fence line where the ground is drier, and native wallaby grasses are dominant, and where we plan to sow our wildflowers next year. For this year we will be planting roughly 300 Acacia flexifolia from up to 7 provenances, and about 750 Acacia montana from up to 15 provenances. Included in these provenances is a solid selection of plants from historical SPAs.

GV water have been great to work with and very accommodating with building access gate for us and securing stock proof fencing around the site. The crew have been working hard in rain, shine and wind, to get the works underway and have completed 8 days of planting.