At Boundary Road, Dromana in Victoria, The Diggers Foundation is bringing a garden back to life that was unavoidably let go through the impacts of COVID-19. What comes next could become one of the most significant initiatives undertaken by The Foundation since Clive and Penny Blazey gifted Heronswood, The Garden of St Erth and The Diggers Club business to The Foundation in 2011.
The Diggers Foundation is excited to announce the establishment of a Living Plant Library at its Boundary Road HQ. The Library will act as a purpose-built growing space where hundreds of heirlooms from the Foundation’s seed bank, along with Diggers unique range of garden-worthy perennials, will be cultivated, documented and shared with gardeners and communities across Australia.
Why now, why this, and how to support us
The seed bank has been the quiet engine of the Foundation’s preservation work for decades. It holds varieties that commercial seed companies dropped long ago, edible and ornamental plants once common in gardens that are now difficult to find. Preserving them in our Seed Bank was always the first step. Growing them back into the world is the next.
The garden at Boundary Road was once that growing space. The Foundation is now restoring this dedicated garden, but doing so with the purpose to:
cultivate a living library of garden-worthy, rare and unique species of edible and ornamental plants;
undertake rigorous trials and grow-outs to monitor growth, yield, vigour and ‘true to type’ characteristics of heirloom fruit, flowers and vegetables;
provide propagation mother stock to ensure a continuum of our gardening inheritance;
create a learning laboratory where plant adaptability to changing climate and conditions is evaluated;
build an education space for gardeners, school students and horticultural interns of today and tomorrow;
provide a place of refuge for horticultural therapy programs;
grow a broad range of plant species that offer food, habitat and homes for insects, birds and small mammals in an urban fringe environment;
create an ecological survey site to measure the impact of intensely gardened areas against surrounding natural vegetation from a biodiversity perspective; and
monitor the carbon capture through regenerative soil improvements and growing practices.
This initiative closes the loop between preservation and practice that has always been at the heart of our vision at Diggers.
“There came a point where Penny and I realised that if this work was going to outlast us, we needed to ground it in a permanent legacy. So, we gave the Foundation the properties and their gardens, the business, 30 years of collected knowledge of seed saving and growing – and a bloody-minded refusal to let treasured heirloom varieties disappear quietly. We did that because we believed the work is important, and we still do.”
– Clive and Penny Blazey, The Diggers Club founders.
Help us achieve this important project
The Foundation is seeking donations to fund the restoration and establishment of the Living Plant Library. Gifts of any size are welcome and every dollar goes directly to the project. Because the campaign runs to 30 June, all donations are fully tax-deductible this financial year.
The Foundation has set an ambitious timeline. Work on the garden is already underway and the first plantings from the seed bank are planned for later this year. The speed and scale of what can be achieved depend directly on the support received from our Diggers community.
Thank you for considering our request. To donate or to find out more about the Living Plant Library, visit diggers.com.au/pages/diggers-foundation