How to grow a tree

Ten years ago we planted an olive seedling on the farm in Fish Creek. 

It was in a tough spot, next to a gap in the windbreak, exposed to the freezing south-westerlies.

Soon after planting a passing mower snapped off a branch leaving it a single stick with a couple of leaves. Bent over in the howling wind I thought it wouldn’t make it through the year.

But come the following Spring it was still there – same bent over stick with its few straggly grey-green leaves.  

For the next eight Springs it’s the same story – sometimes a few new leaves, but always the same skinny, bent over, straggly stick.  Each year looks like the last but we feed it up and hope for the best.

This year something happened; its roots must have finally got down deep enough to grow a few more leaves and then a few more roots and then a few more leaves and suddenly this Spring there it is – a healthy little tree with its first crop of olives (that’s it in the pic above). 

At CERES so many of the things we have grown to love have begun as spindly, straggly, seedlings holding on from year to year.

The park in Brunswick East spent a decade as a treeless muddy ex-tip site before all the weekend clean-ups, garden building and tree planting finally brought it back to life.  

The Earth education programs, now taught around Australia, that drew just a handful of adventurous schools out of their classrooms for those first years hung together on hope and a few scrounged funds before word spread.  

The kids themselves, who come to CERES with their kinders, primary and high schools sometimes take years before the seeds planted during their lessons sprout to life in their homes, schools, workplaces and communities. 

Projects like Olives to Oil, which began almost ten years ago gathering olives from a few backyard trees in a shopping trolley take patience, faith and nurturing. 

This year, an off year for Melbourne olives, program manager Merrin Layden tells me proudly that a couple of thousand people have just collected more than a semi-truck load of fruit for pressing.  

For years before its roots took hold Fair Food too was just a tiny thing – a weekly food coop supplying a few staff with fruit and veg boxes off a picnic table outside the CERES office.

We don’t know what the next spindly seedling that will grow into a tree at CERES will be, only that so many of the things people love about this unique place, including the Solstice and Harvest Festivals, Joe’s Garden, the crazy-beautiful Terra Wonder playground, the chooks and the gardens all seem to start this way. 

We do know that this only happens because of the people who volunteer here, the people who bring their families and friends to visit and play here, the people who buy their plants or groceries here and the people and organisations who donate to keep the spindly seedlings growing here.

This month is CERES’ annual appeal – CERES is a place people deeply love but to keep it going for another year CERES needs its volunteers, its visitors, its customers and this month especially its partners and donors to give what they can  – here’s the appeal link. 

Have a great week

Chris