Friends of Dandenong Valley Parklands NEWSLETTER July 2021 95 Shepherd Road, Glen Waverley 3150 | ABN 75 649 353 834 Table of Contents Calendar of Events and Activities .......................................... 1 Bushy Park Planting ............................................................ 5-6 President’s Report ................................................................ 2 Gardens Report .................................................................... 7 Propagating .............. ............................................................ 3 Waterwatch ........................................................................ 8-9 Biodiversity Restoration ........................................................ 4 Membership Form for 2021 ................................................ 10 Planting Dates ........................................................................ 4 Calendar of Events and Activities *NOTE THAT ALL THESE DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE DUE TO COVID RESTRICTIONS* JULY Sunday 4 10 am-noon Gardens Open Day, Working Bee at 95 Shepherd Road Tuesday 13 10 am Planting maintenance : removal of tree guards. Meet at Bushy Park bird hide Saturday 17 10 am-1pm Shepherds Bush Biodiversity enhancement. Meet at 95 Shepherd Road Tuesday 20 10 am-noon Mid-week propagating group at 95 Shepherd Road Tuesday 20 3.15 pm Liaison meeting with Parks Victoria Wednesday 21 7.30 pm FDVP Committee Meeting Wednesday 28 Newsletter articles to Anne Morton Friday 30 10 am Waterwatch meet at Jells Park East car park Saturday 31 10 am National Tree Day preparation, Bushy Park AUGUST Sunday 1 9.30 am National Tree Day, registration at Pony Club, Bushy Park Sunday 8 10 am-noon Gardens Open Day, Working Bee at 95 Shepherd Road Tuesday 10 10 am Planting maintenance venue T.B.A. Tuesday 17 10 am-noon Mid-week propagating group at 95 Shepherd Road Tuesday 17 3.15 pm Liaison meeting with Parks Victoria Wednesday 18 7.30 pm Annual General Meeting at 95 Shepherd Road Saturday 21 10 am- pm Shepherds Bush Biodiversity enhancement. Meet at 95 Shepherd Road Wednesday 25 Newsletter articles to Anne Morton Friday 27 10 am-noon Waterwatch meet at Jells Park East car park SEPTEMBER Sunday 5 10am-noon Gardens Open Day, Working Bee at 95 Shepherd Road Tuesday 14 9.30 am Tree Planting Day Jells Park Saturday 18 10 am-noon Shepherds Bush Biodiversity enhancement. Meet at 95 Shepherds Rd Tuesday 21 10am-noon Mid-week propagating group at 95 Shepherds Road Tuesday 21 3.15 pm Liaison meeting with Parks Victoria Wednesday 22 7.30pm FDVP Committee Meeting Friday 24 10am-noon Waterwatch meet at Jells Park East car park Wednesday 29 Newsletter articles to Anne Morton Friends of Dandenong Valley Parklands 1 President’s Report June 2021 Parks staff Boat Last Sunday was Kirsten Phelan’s last day at Parks. Kirsten The Friends boat, which we have had for over 20 years has left to join Parks NSW. She will be working out of Bom- and no longer use, has been donated to the Friends of bala near the South coast. Her partner works there. We Braeside. Kelly, who was formerly with us, came and got wish Kirsten all the best. She has done a tremendous job it last Thursday. here and has been very supportive of all our activities. Sandie, the Ranger in Charge will be helping us while a Jells Park garden bed replacement is found. Bryan and Armon have completed designs for the Jells Park garden bed and we have obtained some plants for COVID 19 and our activities planting later in the year. Weeding and final design will We started the month in lockdown and a number of our need to take place. If anyone is interested in helping out normal activities had to be cancelled. However, with the with designing this garden, please contact Bryan. lifting of restrictions activities have resumed and in June we were able to manage a successful propagating session Jells Park boardwalks and a very well attended activity in Shepherds Bush. We are currently drafting a letter to the Environment Min- ister from the Friends group to hopefully speed up the Planting Days 2021 process of replacing the decks. Three planting days in Bushy Park are now underway. We aim to plant nearly 3000 plants in the Creekside site over In the plant nursery the three days. After that our next big day is National Tree In June we continued potting up seedlings mostly prepar- Day at the Bushy Park bird hide site on Sunday August 1st. ing for next year. We also weeded the plants, which are The signs are good that we will have a good roll up then. due to be planted at the end of June. st On Saturday July 31 we will need volunteers to put the The outside area of the nursery is now full of plants all plants in position ready for planting out on our planting days. We are very Koomba Park and grants for 2022 grateful to Knox Environment Society, who donated 400 We have made good progress with the new proposed plants, species we find it difficult to grow. Koomba Park site adjacent to Boronia Road. Before she Community garden beds left, Kirsten got quotes for the goats and the fencing re- A small team is in the process of renovating the beds. quired. An enquiry to Melbourne Water indicated they Most of the existing vegetation has been removed and would be supportive of the proposal and the next step is the next stage will be purchasing suitable plants and re- to apply for a grant, which we will be doing over the next planting over the next few weeks. few weeks. Jells Park Primary In Shepherds Bush, Bryan has done some costings for Activities at Jells Park Primary School were suspended be- track construction along the Shepherds Bush track. And cause of the lockdown, however, Freya and I will be vis- then we plan to apply for grant funding later in the year. iting the school to advise on plants and later we hope to Planting maintenance help them grow their own plants for the school gardens. Our successful planting maintenance program will resume Mirvac housing development in July after the cancellation of the session in June. This We will be attending a site visit on Friday at the proposed will become a regular part of our program on the second new housing development on the site of the old quarry Tuesday of every month. near Norton’s Lane. As an offset Mirvac plan to create 11 In July we will weed around the plants adjacent to the hectares of parkland adjacent to Jells Park. We will be in- Bushy Park bird hide and continue in August. After that terested to see what their plans are. we will return to Koomba where there are three planting David Lumb sites to maintain. Friends of Dandenong Valley Parklands 2 Propagating 15 June 2021 Photos Christine Dix Friends of Dandenong Valley Parklands 3 Shepherds Bush Biodiversity Restoration Since it is over six months since we started our visits to the area of Shepherds Bush immediately east of the rear depot fence between the Paperbark Track and Shepherds Road, we visited the area for our June working bee. Walking in from Paperbark Track, the bent-over grass and other foliage made it obvious that the whole area had been part of Dandenong Creek during Thursday night’s storms. The soil was still saturated and a small drain across the site was still full. Neverthless we pressed on and, not unexpectedly, we encountered small bridal creeper plants everywhere. It was easy to dig the whole plant out and bag them for disposal. During our December visit we found two wild Gladiolis plants, which we were able to dig out, but not without leaving many of the small bulbils, which surrounded the main bulb. We knew that these plants were herbicide resistant so expected that Gladiolis would need a major effort to control. This month we were astonished to find that the whole area was infested with recently germinated Gladiolis. The area was dotted with single blue-gray leaves with a distinctive maroon bottom sheath. The soil was so soft we were able to carefully dig out each main bulb with the bulbils in a clump of mud and put them in a plastic bag for disposal. Even though the whole team converted to gladiolis removal there is much to be done to clear the area. It is important to remove all the gladiolis while the soil is soft, so our July expedition will be focused on gladiolis as well as the remaining bridal creeper (now a lesser problem because of our past work). The situation is urgent! hopefully the COVID-19 regulations will be relaxed so we can have 20 people with us in July. Please come! Bryan Loft Biodiversity Coordinator Planting Dates 2021 Planting is one of our most important activities for the and guard around 2000 plants. Some years we have had year. This year we aim to plant around 6000 shrubs, trees over 100 people join us for this activity. and grasses in Bushy Park and Jells Park. The Bushy Park plantings are in two sites and are a continuation of the Mid-August Jells Park garden bed planting. The date is yet planting we did last year. In Jells Park and the linear trail to be set, but we hope to start planting what could be- we aim to plant around 100 large eucalypts which are cur- come a very attractive garden bed. Most of the plants will rently about 1.5 m tall. We also aim to plant around 500 be indigenous but we are able to plant some more showy plants in the Jells Park garden bed adjacent to Madelines. Australian natives as well. Please contact Bryan Loft if you For all of this we need as much help as we can get. Please would like to be involved in the planning of this garden put the following dates in your diary and encourage any- bed.