ERA NURSERIES - A brief background
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Well known South Western Victorian business identity, Peter Sandow together with South Australian horticulturist and nurseryman, Ted Allender, established ERA Nurseries in late 1998.

Initially the business was based around the former council depot at Hensley Park. The site lent itself to conversion to a nursery space capable of holding 5 - 6 million seedlings. This capacity was reached by the second year so in 2000 ERA developed a second site in Hammond Street, Hamilton. Total production peaked in that year at around 13million seedlings. Most of these were blue gum seedlings for the plantation forestry industry.

By 2004 the business had outgrown it's Hensley Park facility so that was sold and a new purpose built nursery was constructed from a greenfields site on Hamilton's southern boundary. This was commissioned in November 2004 and is now operated in conjunction with the Hammond Street facility.

The drought and subsequent water shortages has resulted in long term water restrictions in the region. These restrictions mean that ERA is unable to use conventional irrigation systems at the Hammond Street site. ERA does however have permission to use automated micro irrigation systems at Hammond Street and has accordingly developed a tree farm specialising in 20 and 30cm pot sizes.

ERA has developed a range of advanced trees and shrubs for the landscaping, government and semi-government and retail market sectors.

An increasing proportion of ERA's annual output is non blue gum species with increasing emphasis on locally-occurring revegetation species and alternative plantation and farm forestry lines.