General News
21 November, 2025
New life for threatened local plant
A TWO-year project to help protect a threatened local plant variety has culminated in new plantings across Warrnambool.
While Correa reflexa is a common plant in southern Australia, the local variety, known as Granny’s Grave, has unique genetic characteristics, with the only known wild population growing in the windswept dunes of Lady Bay.
Warrnambool City Council staff worked with the Australian Plants Society (Warrnambool & District) to find and take cuttings of the wild Granny’s Grave correas for propagation, with Natural Environment Officer Kristy Roche saying that a lot of planning went into the project.
“As one of the last locally unique stands of Correa reflexa, the project is vital in protecting the future of the local species,” she said.
“And because it’s such a fragile population, the utmost care was exercised when taking the cuttings.
“We worked to secure a permit from the Victorian Government to safely take cuttings in accordance with protected vegetation requirements”.
And after two years of expert care, the cuttings have grown into healthy new plants.
Some have been planted in the Warrnambool Botanic Gardens and at Swan Reserve, with other sites hopefully to follow.
President of the Australian Plants Society (Warrnambool & District) David Handscombe “fostered” the cuttings with his wife Linda at their nursery in Illowa.
“We took a representative sample, so 18 plants… with 12 cuttings from each,” Mr Handscombe said.
“Since European settlement, the vegetation has been so dramatically altered in the Warrnambool area, it’s important that we try and maintain and even bolster those species that have survived.
“If anything happens to the population in the dunes, we’ve got a reserve that we can propagate from and re-introduce them.
“It’s conservation through propagation.”
He said that a permit had also been granted to remove some introduced species in the dunes which are competing with the Granny’s Grave correa.
Secretary Kevin Sparrow said that while Correa reflexa was common, the local wild population was distinct, with notable differences even between individual plants
“Each one is unique in some special way,” Mr Sparrow said.
“The one in the nursery trade is a smaller leaf, low growing one while these are more upright and a lot of the leaves are different.
“They’re all individually labelled so we know exactly which plant they are from, so with what we’ve planted in the gardens, we can track back to the natural population.
“We can match plants to plants.”
Warrnambool City Council senior supervisor horticulture and botanic gardens Bridget Hampton said that as well as safeguarding the species in the wild, she hoped its introduction to the gardens would lead to greater appreciation more broadly.
“It’s great to see more natives coming into the Botanic Gardens and to have a variety of the Granny’s Grave correa that we can have on display for the public to see,” she said.
“It will be a great point of interest in winter when it’s in flower, and it will also support nectar-eating birds.
“Where it’s located (in the north-west corner of the gardens) is a little bit of a quieter area, so it will be nice to draw more people into this part of the gardens.”
