PASSIONATE green thumbs are being invited to bring the Fletcher Jones gardens back to their colourful best.
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There is also a push to establish a friends of the gardens group to maintain and preserve the iconic site long into the future.
Warrnambool resident Lex Caldwell volunteers 40 hours a week in the heritage-listed industrial gardens, but more people are needed to prepare the area for spring.
Jenny Bardsley, who runs a stall in the factory’s Mill Markets, noticed Mr Caldwell hard at work and said the 1.4-hectare garden and its 27 individual beds were too much for one person to maintain.
She hopes people who hold the gardens close to their heart can help by donating plants or time.
Mrs Bardsley said the aim was to form a friends group and have people “adopt a garden bed” .
She said the cost of new plants was prohibitive for the small volunteer group and donated seedlings or cuttings would be appreciated.
Mrs Bardsley and Mr Caldwell operate a small nursery at the site which helps to fund the purchase of plants, but nowhere near the amount needed to restore the heritage-listed, post-war gardens to their original condition.
The gardens date to 1948 and were once the site of a quarry. They have Sir Fletcher Jones’ hawker wagon, a waterfall and wishing well amid a number of garden beds and a large grassed area.
They surround the former factory, which closed in 2005. The site was heritage listed in 2006.
Mr Caldwell works tirelessly in the gardens. “You quite often just see Lex out there mowing and that’s before you do any weeding or repairing of the garden beds. It’s fantastic … without him it would be an absolute jungle out there,” Mrs Bardsley said.
She said the garden was one of a few heritage-listed industrial gardens in Australia and was ahead of its time for a factory setting. Plants and flowers in the garden needed to be from the 1950s to comply with heritage requirements.
“The heritage aspect has to be how the gardens were set out and the intention of the garden at the time. I have to make sure that they’re the right ones, that they’re not modern hybrids,” she said.
“I know Lex said he isn’t able to put many natives in because it was quite an exotic garden. (At that time) in Australia, we just copied England basically.”
Mrs Bardsley is aware of the tourism value it has for Warrnambool and said the area was enjoyed by locals and visitors.
“We need people with ideas, we need people with plants in their garden who can give us cuttings. We want people who want to help us research and set up a plan, maybe a three-year plan and people with people management skills,” she said.
To help, contact Mrs Bardsley on 0428 504 801.