ROGER DENNIS HEYNE
(1944 - ) - 4TH GENERATION

Roger's mother managed a florist shop on the Norwood Parade. 
1952 Photo on left, Roger 7 years old.
During his Norwood primary school and infant school days, Roger would walk from the Osmond terrace road up the Norwood parade, call into his mother's shop and then continue up the parade until he reached Heyne's nursery. There his father would have a late afternoon sandwich waiting for him, but Roger was never hungry.
Why was this young growing boy not hungry?
Well, next door, just before he reached his mother's florist shop was a Butcher shop. The owner would wait for Roger to come past and dash out with a huge three inch chunk of fritz. Don't tell your mother I gave it to you he would say. Roger would stand inside the butcher shop chomping away until it was finished before going to see his mother. Then off he would go, kissing his mother good buy. A few buildings up the street there was a cake and drink shop, where a lovely middle aged women would take him into her shop, sit him down to large glass of lemonade and a huge cream cake. Then she would say don't tell your mother or she will be cross at me. A couple of more shops further up the street was a lolly shop, where all the lollies were hand made in those days. There would be waiting for Roger, another lady with a big bag of lollies. Eat them all up before you get home otherwise your father will get cross at me. This feeding process went on every school day until Roger went to high school. Roger's mother found out about his feeding indulgence after he went to high school. They all said they missed your cute little boy with the biggest brown eyes.

Roger Heyne is a fourth generation nursery person who commenced full time in the industry when he was 18 years old. His love of plants virtually started just after he began walking. If he was not in the home you would always find him out in the nursery some where picking up plants and looking at them.
Roger as a young child was brought up appreciating and loving plants, animals birds and fish in ponds.
Behind the old homestead and in front of the original timber shade house, was a huge three section bird cage. The three sections could be entered through a system of small narrow doorways, which meant that you had to crawl on hands and knees to go into the each section.
The first section had a Tortoise pond with a mixture of Chinese and Australian Tortoises and the cage was also filled with budgies. The other two sections contained two Pheasants (male and female), Quails, Canaries and Finches. Roger loved feeding and tending to them.
Sometimes when feeding the Tortoises with mince meat, Roger would allow one child at a time to go into the first cage and help feed the Tortoises. One particular day he permitted one of the regular customer?s child (a girl in a pure long white dress) to feed these creatures, but as she lent over the pond, bottom of her dress soaked up the green slimy water like an oil lantern wick. She was on her way out to a party! That was the end of granting anyone permission to go in the cages after that.

LIFE IN THE NURSERY
Roger's first job as a young child was washing terracotta pots with a piece of old hessian cloth in an old horse trough. In those days the clients brought back the empty plant pots, these were cleaned and then reused.
Photo on left; Roger three and a half years and Glen eight years old.
His next promotion was to put crock(broken pieces of pots)in the bottom of pot plants that were to be potted.

1953 - Approx. 8 years old picking up snails(a gallon bucket)paid 1 penny per bucket.
In the early days there were many grass paddocks around which bred thousands of snails. These slimy creatures somehow found their way during the winter months into the nursery. They even crossed the main road, of course in those days a tram car only ran up The Parade every twenty five minutes and you might wait for an hour or so for a car to go past.
Roger and his older brother Glen were given a bucket each to collect the snails in. The biggest problem was to stop the snails from escaping up the side of the bucket and over the side back onto the ground while the boys were busy trying to find more. This was a labourious, frustrating job.
Their father (Wally) then collected the nearly full bucket, sprinkled garden lime on top of the snails and added water to kill them.

1954 - Replacement of Tram lines (night watchman - Angelo)
Roger had a fascination with the trams and spent his spare time watching the trams go by the nursery very slowly while the lines were being upgraded. Just before bed time he would take out some of his moms home made biscuits or a scone with home made jam and take it out to the old night watchman. Roger used to say to his mum that Mr Angelo was cold, lonely and hungry during the night, that's why he took the food out.

1955 - Approx. 10 years old always wanted a pony. (Horse Manure in punnets).
Once he reached primary school age the next training in the nursery business was the use of horse manure. When he was a young boy he always wanted a horse of his own, but the closest connection he had with horses was to place a half inch of their manure in the bottom of seedling punnets before soil was placed on top. These punnets were then used for growing seedlings (these days plastic punnets are used without the use of horse manure!).
Stringing labels
Another labourious task the boys had to do during the autumn and winter months was to string 1,000s of plant labels. Roger came up with the idea of stringing extra labels during the summer months and storing them in an old pillow case in the bottom of his bedroom cupboard. The cupboard was built-in and Roger noticed that when the flooring planks were lifted up there was a huge two foot compartment below. Roger strung and stored labels when he had spare time during the year and when they were needed by his father the labels were ready available. He would hand the required amount over and let his father think that he had strung them earlier that day. This gave him plenty of time to go and play while his older brother was stuck inside the home making up his daily quota.

1956 - Eleven and a half years old Going to the beach to collect seaweed.
Roger always had a love for the beach and water. In late summer their father would take the boys down to Largs in a little green panel-van. The van floor would be packed with hessian bags which the boys would sit on. On arriving at the beach Wally would instruct the boys to help him fill the bags with dry seaweed off the beach. This material would be stored at the nursery and used during the winter months to wrap around the rose and fruit tree roots when the customers took their plants home. (In those days removal of seaweed from the beach was legal). It was hot and dry and their father would tell the boys they could go in the water for 5 minutes before going home. Roger always thought the work was worth it, because it allowed him a swim in the sea for a short time.

1958 Holding hose and watering. Age 13 years.
Roger's father (Wally Heyne) trained him the correct way of watering the pot plants, how and when to water. Most people think watering pots in a nursery is simple and easy to do. But shade houses, fences, walls, wind and heat, size of pots, type of soil in the pots all have a effect on how much water and when to water. You can not stand there splashing water everywhere. So that precious water is not wasted, each pot has to be individually filled with water.

1960 -15 years old - Wrapping up seedlings early hours of morning on hands and knees.
At this age Roger was inducted into the art of preparing bundles of seedlings for sale. Come rain, wind, sun shine or heat, every week day including all public holidays, preparing seedings for the sales area had to be executed. This meant even before going to school in the mornings.
The day started very early in the morning by going into the packing shed , turning on the light and after removing the staples first, then tearing hundreds of woman?s weekly magazines in half.
Each page had to have one corner folded down and then stacked into heaps. There were hundreds of bundles to be dug once the sun light was bright enough to see what everyone was doing.
Roger's father, plus another person would kneel down on the ground and dig out of the stock beds a selected number of seedling and squashed them into a bundle. They were then packed on top or each other forming a trianglar heap.
Roger's job was to come along behind and pick up each bundle and wrap around a sheet of paper he had prepared earlier before. He would then place them in wooden seedling trays and place each tray on a wheel barrow. The seedling boxes were then taken to the old horse trough to be immersed in water to soak the bundles. The trays were then placed back onto the barrows to drain. Roger's father would have his breakfast while Roger was implementing this job. After finishing his chores, Roger would then go and have his breakfast and then go to school.
These seedling were vegetables and assorted flowers. The plants would only last a day so any seedling which had not sold on the day would have to be thrown away on the compost heap at the end of the day. Not like today where the plants are grown in special containers allowing the plants to be kept for a longer period of time.

1962 - 18 years old - left High School & entered the business full time.
When he left Urrbrae Agricultural High School, for the next six months, Roger had the exciting job of hand weeding Wally's nursery on his hands and knees.
His next learning assignment, he was promoted to mixing soil. Let's just say that Roger started from the dirt up. Different types of soil (including copra dust and double washed quarry sand) were spread in layers on top of each other until the heap was approximately two metres in hight. Then a person would stand on top of the heap and slice it down. The soils were then mixed by hand with a large shovel turning the mixture over and over until the mix was all one type. This heap was then thrown against an on old, screen mesh, bed base and then the mix was scraped down to remove any stones or old root rubbish.
Pictures on right shows the type of bed which was set up on a pole. If there was a larger amount of soil to be prepared, then a double bed would be used.
This soil mix was then wheel barrowed to a storage area where it was kept until the potting benches needed topping up.
In those days you did not need a fitness centre to body build, the muscles came with the job.

Approximately one year after Roger started, his brother Glen left the family business.



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