Oct27

Seeds of Hope

Posted on 27 Oct 2009 - Permalink

-by Kath Gannaway (Mountain Views Mail)

AN EXCITING collaboration between business and community health has planted the seed for an innovative mental health initiative in Healesville.

EACH has invested $155,000 to buy and redevelop the former Maroondah Garden Centre plant nursery.

Super Soil purchased the landscape and nursery business earlier this year but was keen to sell off the nursery component.

EACH’s manager of training and vocational enterprises Darrell Hinga said Super Soil’s willingness to partner up with his organisation and to offer a generous selling price had made the project possible.

“They have invested a good deal of trust in an organisation that does not have an established reputation for being big players in the garden or nursery industry,” Mr Hinga said.

“We were able to buy the business for $55,000 and the EACH’s board of management then committed to $100,000 in operating costs,” he said.

The business will be called EACH Plants and Nursery Centre.

“This project is about building up our capacity and response to working with people with a mental illness and getting them involved in a community venture which can lead to employment,” he said.

He said there were significant barriers to employment for people who have a disability and mental health has its own barriers.

“Providing experience in an industry which is recognised as having a demonstrated skills shortage was seen as a practical way of redressing some of those barriers,” he said.

“There are two goals we would hope to achieve here.

“One is to help reduce the stigma of mental health and its effects on people by saying this is what can be achieved if you give people a chance.”

Mr Hinga said the nursery project was a good fit with EACH’s role as a mental health provider and that services it provided would be available to the people working in the nursery. “Medium to long-term, our plan is that we will be able to offer a horticultural qualification so we can link the training side by side with experience as a pathway to employment,” he said.

The nursery will be a commercial enterprise run as a professional and competitive business. Manager Danny Wilcox has extensive experience in the nursery industry and said he is tremendously excited to be involved in the EACH project.

Working with him is Elissa Hirst, also a qualified horticulturist, who is equally excited by the opportunity to work in an environment which has the potential to be personally rewarding and life changing for so many people.

An open weekend will be held on 7 and 8 November and members of the public are invited to drop in, meet the new owners and their team and share ideas and aspirations for the new venture.