Barung Native Nursery – SPRING Update

What’s in stock?

The Maleny Community Nursery at Porters Lane is currently flush with a range of quality native plants.

Thanks to our members and volunteers who helped us to collect seed!

Piccabeen Palms Archontophoenix cunninghamiana

The Piccabeen Palm is a beautiful feature of our Sunshine Coast rainforests. Mostly found in moist, sheltered sites and gullies, they grow up to 25 metres tall, and can grow in thick groves in swampy areas where they often thrive. A great example of this is at Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve.   

Through summer, the Piccabeen Palm will be bursting with several heavily flowering and fruiting branches, which are an important food source for many of our pollinators. You can often hear the bees if you are close by while they are in bloom. Species such as Topknot Pigeons, Wompoo Fruit Doves, Green Cat Birds and flying foxes can be found feasting on the fruit. Such wildlife are a vital part of spreading seed further through the forest. The fruit, a bright red, thinly fleshed berry, will mostly drop close to the parent tree where they continue to provide food for more ground-dwelling wildlife, and eventually germinate in the shady, damp understory. Piccabeen groves are also known to provide habitat for Spiny Crayfish, who’s burrows can often be found through the forest floor particularly along creek lines.

The Barung crew along with our dedicated volunteers have been busy collecting seed this year, which is a careful task requiring seed to be collected in more remote locations as to avoid collecting from plants that have potentially hybridised with Alexander palms (a common landscape plant). 

Because of these efforts, the Maleny Community Nursery at Porters Lane is now flush with quality  Piccabeen Palm tubestock, ready for your revegetation or landscaping projects. So pop in and have a chat to our friendly staff if you are working on a project and would like some tips and advice on other species to include.

Piccabeen grove – Cam Burton

Olea paniculata – What a team effort!

Word on the street was that there were a few Oleas fruiting around the district, so Wayne, our Production Nursery Manager got in touch with Ian and Di who told him the rainforest pigeons were feasting on some of their trees in Flaxton.

Wayne spent the afternoon with Ian and Di collecting a few thousand seeds which are beginning to germinate well. In the coming months through summer, we will have tubes for sale in the nursery to go into a range of local revegetation projects.

Call for White Booyong a success!

Thank you to everyone who responded to the call out to let us know about any White Booyong that was dropping seed in the region.

We had a number of responses from the community which resulted in us collecting great numbers of White Booyong, Rusty Booyong (thanks Dan!), and a good batch of Black Booyong.

Our members make such a valuable contribution to the work of the nursery through seed collections, which has an impact on regional biodiversity. We are truly grateful for this. Thank you to everyone who helps.

White Booyong in the nursery

Download our monthly stock list

Looking to get into a planting project after all this rain? You can download the monthly stock list from our nursery page on the website.

Behind the scenes

A lot of work goes on behind the scenes in our native nurseries to bring you quality tubestock for your revegetation projects and native gardens for wildlife. From collecting and propagating seed, to general care and maintenance of the nurseries, it’s a joy to work with our staff and volunteers to make sure our community and project partners have access to a diversity of species that truly make a positive difference when planted back into the local environment.

Our volunteers carry out a great deal of this work and we could not do it without them. Thank you to everyone who helps make the Barung nurseries a success!

Call for new Friday nursery crew at Landsborough

We are looking for volunteers to join our Friday morning volunteer crew to carry out light work at our production nursery in Landsborough.

If you have a passion for plants and Landcare and a few hours free on Friday morning, come and get your hands dirty, learn about native species and enjoy a cuppa with other like-minded volunteers.

Jobs include weeding, plant maintenance, seed processing and other light tasks. Much of this will be in the shadehouse.

Interested in volunteering with us? Volunteering offers many rewards for those who join us. Fill out an application form below to express your interest of contact the nursery for more information on nursery@barunglandcare.org.au

Forest in a festival!

It was an absolute joy to collaborate with The Rangebow Festival team this spring to create a food forage forest at Flaxton Gardens as part of their glamorous Forage, Fire, Feast dinner with First Nations chef Aunty Dale Chapman.

Megan and Cam worked hard to create a mini-forest of all local native species (some of the species used in the dishes as part of the First Nations dinner) for guests to meander through as the evening commenced.

We loved being part of this inclusive community event that celebrates diversity across the range. We look forward to creating something magical with the Rangebow team next year!