Time to check in with our busy and dedicated winter volunteers
It’s been a busy month in the world of Nature Glenelg Trust’s volunteers! We’ve made a start on our planting for the year and have also been busy in the nursery, getting ready for propagating new seedlings for our planting projects.
We’ve recently had a group of new volunteers join some wonderful long-term volunteers on our volunteer activities, and it’s been great to see how engaged and enthusiastic everyone is. These volunteer activities really make a big impact on the local environment and help NGT out a lot. We wouldn’t be able to get all of this work done without our volunteers.
Volunteers clean seed at the community nursery
A small group of new volunteers have been regularly coming in to work in the nursery during the week. They have been involved in seed cleaning, pricking out seedlings into pots, weeding and washing pots.
The nursery is always quieter during winter time, but it’s been great to have the volunteers help out with all the bits and pieces that need to be done before it really gets busy again in spring. We’ve really enjoyed having some new faces around the nursery and their enthusiasm, interest and engagement has been great to see.
Volunteers weeding in the nursery
If anyone is interested in joining our small group of nursery volunteers, please get in contact via ">email or telephone 08 8797 8596. Once things start getting busy in the nursery in a month or two, we will really appreciate all the help we can get!
The other thing that’s been keeping our volunteers busy over winter is our fortnightly Fieldwork Friday. Fieldwork Friday is a relatively new concept for NGT and it’s been gradually building momentum, which has been great to see. We offer a wide range of activities in many different locations for Fieldwork Friday, so that volunteers can experience many aspects of our work.
Our next two Fieldwork Friday activities are:
9th August – Tree planting at Mount Burr Swamp
23rd August – A sneak peek into a new and exciting property!
The volunteers who attended our last few Fieldwork Fridays have been involved in seed cleaning, tree planting, seed collecting and drilling and filling pines. The weather has been a bit hit-and-miss the last month or two, but we always have nursery work as a back-up, and we’re hoping that from now on we’ll have a bit more luck with the weather.
Mount Burr Swamp has especially benefited from the hard work of our volunteers this winter. Despite the wind and rain, volunteers have planted over 1,300 seedlings in the last month!
Bird watching at Mount Burr Swamp
Finally, I would like to say thank you to our volunteers for all their amazing work, and goodbye, as I am heading to Melbourne next week to start a new job in the biodiversity section of the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.
I have had an amazing experience as the Volunteer Coordinator for Nature Glenelg Trust and have really enjoyed developing the volunteer program. If you are keen to fill my shoes here at NGT, then please read this story for information on how to apply.
