This month the 700,000 seedlings flourishing in Denis Mitchel’s Wongan Hills Tree farm will depart their cosy nursery to be planted out around the state, revegetating development areas as well as finding their way to farms and gracing the curbs of local streets. As he deftly upturns a pot to inspect the developing root system it’s obvious that the art of growing things has become second nature to Denis, but it certainly didn’t start out that way.
Denis arrived in Wongan Hills in 1969 as a 14-year-old emigrating from the UK with his family, and has spent the best part of his life in the shire. He tried his hand at several businesses, but settled on tree production, despite having no prior experience before embarking on Wongan Tree farm in 1997.
He recalls his biggest learning curve happened during the 15 years he held a seed collector’s licence, forgaging in the bush for the seeds his customers wanted, watching the seasons and learning the habits of the bush. “To be honest, going out to collect seeds was my best learning tool. Looking at trees, identifying when they’re flowering, looking at how the seed pod develops from the flower and what happens next.” Now, seed collection is a highly regulated industry, with fines of up to $10,000 for those who contravene the stringent rules. “In the end there was too much red tape,” says Denis of the process.
Today Denis, along with wife Ellen and up to 6 local helpers, germinates over 220 different species of bought seed to specifc order for Wheatbelt NRM, Greening Australia, Main Roads Department, the Gateway WA Project and many local councils providing thousands of seedings for planting out during the June/July season when the rains come.
This year the New Norcia bypass project is a local development with a landscaping requirement and against his better judgement Denis has fulfilled the order for the larger 130mm pots of Eucalyptus crucis (commonly known as the Southern Cross Mallee) to give an instant display. “The smaller seedlings do better in the ground,” he says. “We use a specific
COL-MAX ‘root trainer’ tray which air prunes the roots and encourages them to grow straight.” The trays of 64 allow just a tiny pocket of soil for each plant – but Denis says its ample. “People ask me how deep to plant, and they are often surprised when I tell them to plant at least 20cms below ground level” he says. “It doesn’t matter if the stem is buried – the important thing is that the roots are moist and protected.”
After 20 years in the game he knows what works. “Our customers tell us our seedlings have a very good strike rate,” says Ellen. “We’ve never had to advertise. Business spreads by word of mouth.”
This year, for the first time, Denis has had a go at growing Sandalwood and expects to have around 1000 plants at a mature stage in the coming months. “We’ve grown the hosts, mainly Acacias, since we started, but never actual Sandalwood.” Notoriously tricky, the hemi-parasitic plant grows from a nut and must be planted with a host to provide it’s nutrients. Cracking this new challege is clearly a welcome diversion for Denis who confesses the 7-day-a-week job is hard yakka and the market competitive.
“When we started we were getting 35c a plant and twenty years later the price is only 45c – go figure!” he says. But Denis has no plans to stop now, “This will see me into retirement,” he says, “I’m happy here.”
