ArchivesACT has chosen records relating to Yarralumla Nursery cards and ledgers for its June ‘Find of the Month’.
According to records, the cards and ledgers created by the Yarralumla Nursery may hold the answers to why the plants Canberrans see around their streets and suburbs were selected.
The Archives said the significant role the Yarralumla Nursery played in Canberra’s development as a liveable city could be revealed by browsing through its collection of cards and ledgers.
“The nursery cards include details on the trees that now form the Cork Oak Plantation at the National Arboretum,” the Archives said.
“It has been said that Canberra’s Yarralumla Nursery ‘made the national capital a garden city’ and also put the ‘bush’ in the bush capital,” it said.
ArchivesACT said records of the nursery dated back as far as 1912 when the first experimental nursery was established at Acton, followed two years later by a permanent nursery on a portion of land on Yarralumla station known as Sheedy’s paddock.
“Experiments need to be documented; the sources, successes, failures, methods and conditions had to be recorded,” it said.
“This was the beginning of a recordkeeping system consisting of buff and blue coloured cards that were used to record the day to day work of the nursery for around 50 years.”
It said the cards were later complemented and eventually replaced by volumes of ledgers that in combination had left an enduring and rich legacy.
ArchivesACT said the cards and ledgers from the Yarralumla Nursery covering the years up to 1996 were digitised in 2011 and could be easily accessed by visiting its website.
The Yarralumla Nursery records can be accessed at this PS News link.
