Diana Fullalove
Nursery Apprenticeship
Diana began working at Yarra View Nursery three and a half years ago. ‘I began working there under the ‘work for the dole’ scheme,’ she says. ‘I fell in love with the smell of the nursery, especially first thing in the morning when everything is damp.’ She has since completed a Nursery Apprenticeship and is now undergoing the compulsory year of work placement, so she will be fully qualified in November 2009.
In 2008 she was awarded the Knox Rotary Club Award of Excellence at the Swinburne Horticulture Awards, competing with 300 hundred apprentices for this prestigious accolade. Then later in the year she won the Nursery & Garden Industry of Australia’s (NGIA) Certified Nursery Professional Scholarship. She is off on an all expenses paid trip to Canberra in 2009 to attend the NGIA national conference and Urban Greenscapes Symposium.
Diana now supervises a crew of eight, supporting people with disabilities and teaching them horticultural skills and work ethics. She is also very involved in the wider industry, as a member of the NextGen Committee, run by the Nursery & Garden Industry of Victoria, and was a leading designer of the award-winning Swinburne Achievable Garden at the 2008 Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show.
