Lockdown Project: Seedlings

As the implications of COVID-19 started to affect our communities, we all began dealing with the challenges of lockdowns and we were hearing stories of economic and social pressures. We felt we needed to do our bit to help – but how?

Perhaps a little after toilet paper started to lose its appeal, came the panic buying of vegetable seed and seedlings. That was our catalyst; we could help some of the members of our community to get a vegetable garden underway by providing seedlings as inspiration and the start of their ‘patch’.

Our nursery and potager garden normally provide all the salads and vegetables for our group lunches. With the travel bans of COVID-19, the groups were gone but the facility remains. So, a target of 3000 seedlings was plucked from the air and we started sowing… and sowing… and sowing.

Six weeks later we met the target and delivered them to Hobart. MONA is leading the charge in encouraging people to grow vegetables through a new ‘Victory Gardens’ project. “Dig up a lawn and plant veges” is the mantra. Under their banner is the ’24 Carrot Garden’ project, establishing gardens in schools and communities to help kids to learn to grow, cook and eat healthy produce. With 24 Carrot Garden’s provision of seeds and seedlings to individuals and community gardens, we thought we could help.

We proudly contributed our 3000 seedlings across 10 different varieties and will look forward to keeping in touch with the project to see the positive benefits of vegetable gardening being enjoyed in Tassie’s communities.

Hopefully our initiative will provide some short-term help and encourage gardening in the long term.  We were even fortunate enough to receive a letter of thanks and support from Her Excellency the Governor of Tasmania, who has visited us here in the past. It was wonderful for our team to read the kind words of support for our efforts in what Her Excellency noted as ‘such a worth cause’, thanking our team for ‘the wonderful example we have set’.  It made us all very proud to receive this from someone who is so focused on the wellbeing of our Tasmanian community. 

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