With all the preparations for the October Open Gardens weekend, club members still found time for a couple of rambles. It was an early start as members boarded a bus to visit the Illawarra Grevillea Gardens. This proved to be a popular trip and filled up very quickly as members put their names down to attend. The native garden did not disappoint and then it was onto the Buddhist Temple, an elusive building that very few have the privilege to visit, for a lovely lunch, this was followed by a visit to Hans and Lynn Van der Harr’s garden. After an opportunity to explore this beautiful garden, afternoon tea was served by members of the local garden club, fully fortified it was time to return back to Galston.
Our second ramble was much closer to home at the “Boongala” Native Gardens at Pitt Town Rd Kenthurst. After a walk through the rainforest, Malcolm gave a talk on native bees, local birds and native orchids. As always when plants can be purchased, gardeners are in heaven. As “Boongala” is only open a couple of times of the year members were able to talk with an expert on planting and growing native plants.
Our October guest speaker was Adele Stephenson from Rocky Point Mulching. Adele was a bright and informative speaker who gave us an interesting insight into this family run company that was born out of adversity. Rocky Point started as a sugar cane farm, but a particularly hard drought in the early 1900’s saw them selling what was left after harvesting (called “cane waste) to cattle farmers to feed their stock, when the rains finally came and the cane waste was no longer needed, the idea was born to use it as mulch. Today Matt Keith, a 3rd generation farmer and grandson runs a multi-million dollar business that has 80 employees. Over the last 20 years Rocky Point has expanded into Potting Mixes, Orchid mix, Cow manure, Native Mix, Garden Soil, Active 8 soil improver and Organic Life pellets. They are the only company to be organically certified and as they look to the future they are looking at generating their own power as well as being true to the environment by expanding into recycling of green waste from councils. Adele and Rocky Point kindly donated products for our meeting raffle as well as the Mega raffle for the Open Gardens weekend, as well there were products for sale.
We look forward to seeing you at our next club meeting, which will be our last formal meeting for the year when we will be holding a Q & A evening.
Garden Club meets on the 2nd Weds of the month at the Galston Community Centre 37 Arcadia Rd., Galston 8.00pm, new members are warmly welcomed. For other information, visit our website: www.galstongardenclub.com.au
