Hail Damage

Hello Ballarat,



Wow what a night Tuesday night was... Well for some anyway.

Some people might be completely unaware of the weather event that occurred over Delacombe/Sebastopol Tuesday evening. Sitting at home listening to some heavy rain and impressive thunder, we were completely unaware of what we would find on Wednesday morning. Walking in we were soon aware something a little more dramatic had occurred. Our nursery had been completely smashed by a hailstorm including the flooding of our shed/shop. 

All staff have been exceptional in the clean up in the last two days and this will be continuing the clean up in the days to come. The immediate mess is gone but the clean up and most importantly my values will continue for weeks to come.

The last two days has been a great reminder of just how lucky we are to work in a fantastic industry with heaps of people willing to help and do what they can to help get us up and running doing what we believe in as soon as possible. We have ordered truckloads of plants which have been arriving already and will continue to do so over the next week.

‘A little hail’ I hear some of you say. ‘What’s the big deal?’

Today, we CAN see the cosmetic affect the hail has had, shredded leaves, complete defoliation of some plants and pretty much every flower in the nursery gone. It looks as though possums have had a 50^th birthday party and 100 bachelors went a little rogue. Today, what we CANNOT see yet is the underlying damaged caused to the plants, bruising, scaring, and freezing. The hail was thick enough that it has sat in the top of the pots over night and frozen a lot of the foliage as well as smashing it. Imagine holding an ice pack on your head all night, pretty sure we would end up with freezer burn.

The nursery is filling back up quickly with new supply, but we are also emptying it as we handle every plant one by one to do what is required to hopefully save and bring back these plants to retail quality. There is no clear way of knowing immediately what the outcome of this work will be and we could have zero success. With over 23 years’ experience in this industry, if I’m not confident that the plant will grow and flourish in your yard, how can I expect that you will succeed with your purchase. We are here to make gardening successful, and my business is built around making that a reality. To do that we source and sell the best healthiest stock that I can find to pass onto you.

In a couple of days there will be no obvious evidence of the storm - except in our trees. With over 1500 on site, we will be sorting through these one by one and seeing if we can get these back to retail quality. In the short term we can still help in this area but instead of being loaded and ready to go we will need our customers to have a little patience and it might mean getting new stock from growers.

One last thing before I finish is that I can guarantee you that no plant will be sold from this nursery that I don’t believe is fit for retail sale and therefore help you have successful gardening experiences.

The shed, as always, is still full of thousands of pots and giftware and most importantly, smiles. See you on the lead up to Christmas….only 46 more sleeps.

Jason and the team at Spot on Pots and Nursery.