C&LM team help VPOP weed the Tennis Court Patch,16.8.15

On Tuesday 16.8.15, Rachel’s enthusiastic Para Worklinks team removed around 2,000 litres of weeds from the Tennis Court Patch in Vale Park!  And they’ve asked to come back again – yes please!

The team are studying for a Certificate 3 in Conservation and Land Management through Para Worklinks in the northern suburbs. On a perfect winter’s day, with very soft soil, they did a splendid job of removing the sometimes waist-high weeds, as can be seen below.

Now our lovely flowering Gold-dust wattles (Acacia acinacea) can be clearly seen and our other locally native plants can thrive!  The view for passersby is also vastly improved which will be greatly appreciated.

The team also enjoyed learning about our native orchids, and discovered (and photographed) some of first White Fairies flowers of the year (which normally start flowering the first week of spring!).

Jess and Jessie, who came in their own transport, even volunteered to do valuable extra weeding with me on the Wildflower Walk after the rest of the team had to leave in the minibus.

We not only completely weeded the section near the flowering White Fairies, we all discovered lots of Caladenia latifolia seedlings and plants.  This included a large patch of at least 50 seedlings which maybe our first White Fairy seedlings, judging by the position and longer/thinner than usual leaves.  So far, all of the seedlings on the Walk that are large enough to flower have been Pink Fairies, despite the White Fairies being far more numerous.  The White Fairies however have increased vegetatively to form pretty clonal clumps.

Well done to the whole team, it was a most enjoyable productive day!