News location:

Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Historic nursery records digitised

THE  preservation project to digitise some of  Yarralumla Nursery’s earliest records dating back to 1913 is complete, with about 15,500 handwritten index cards and three ledgers being digitised by the Territory Records Office.

The cards, which had been stored in a corrugated shed,  record the source, propagation, cultivation, location and trial results of seeds, plants and cuttings between 1913 and the 1960s. The ledgers record the acquisition of seeds and plants from 1948 to June 2011.

“The corrugated iron shed in the Yarralumla Nursery’s working area has been the Nursery Office since 1914 and has held these records for the last 99 years, vulnerable to damage from water, fire and vandalism,” said Chief Minister Katy Gallagher.

“The digitisation project, initiated and managed by the ACT Monaro and Riverina Branch of the Australian Garden History Society and supported by an ACT Heritage Grant, has ensured that they are now backed up with a reliable copy.”

The digitisation of the records secures their content against loss or damage and makes it possible to make them widely available for researchers and more general consultation.

When Charles Weston (pictured, at the Yarralumla Nursery) arrived in Canberra in 1911 the landscape he encountered was undulating grassland with few trees, exposed to fierce winds and severe winter frosts. In 1913, Weston established a nursery where nearly all the trees, shrubs and grasses that define Canberra’s public spaces originated.

“Remarkably, the records he started to keep in 1913 have survived and been maintained by successive managers of the Yarralumla Nursery, and these modest working tools can now be seen as treasures for not only botanists and historians but for anyone interested in how Canberra came to be as we see it today,” the Chief Minister said.

 

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews