A video posted by Everything Geraldton (@everythinggeraldton) on Dec 12, 2014 at 12:35am PST

The City of Greater Geraldton’s Community Nursery has been in operation for many years but has welcomed a new relocation to Adelaide Street, Waggrakine, along with some much needed upgrades.

With the goal of the Nursery to grow local provenance native plants for revegetation of our natural bushland environment, over the last three months the nursery has received a considerable facelift thanks to the Section 95 prisoner team from the Greenough Regional Prison.

Boasting a wide variety of skills and enthusiasm to match, the prisoners have completed a number of projects over the last few months at the nursery, including paving, building a privacy screen and benches, painting, installing a sump, building shade houses and wicking beds, and also building and installing windows and drying racks.

City of Greater Geraldton Deputy Mayor, Neil McIlwaine, praised the prisoners for their hard work on the nursery upgrade.

“It was great to see the prisoners putting their skills to such good use and watch the Community Nursery grow and change over the last few months,” he said.

“It’s been a real team effort and we’re very proud of all of the hard work that everyone has put into upgrading the Community Nursery.”

To assist the prisoners to gain extra skills, some of the work has been carried out in conjunction with training that the prisoners received through Durack Institute of Technology’s eleven week industrial skills program.

Coordinated by the City’s Natural Areas Officer, all of the planting is carried out by a team of energetic local community volunteers who meet on a weekly basis.

In January the nursery will swing into action to begin propagation of this year’s native plants and the nursery provides a warm welcome to new community volunteers who would like to be involved.

For more information about how you can become a volunteer with the Community Nursery, visit the City website at www.cgg.wa.gov.au