Heritage Fruit Trees is run by Rob Pelletier with wife, Kate Blood, and a small permanent team and casual helpers during the winter pick, pack and post. Glenview Park Farm, 145 acres of paradise, is near Beaufort in western Victoria nestled in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. Around 40 acres is farmed with the balance reasonably high quality and
endangered Grassy Woodland and Heathy Dry Forest complex, including some trees the ecologists have suggested might be old growth. This section of the property is important for the ecosystem services it provides for us and the local area.
Rob and Kate moved to 56 ha ‘Glenview Park’ at Beaufort in 2001. The nursery started in 2008 and they held their first on-farm workshops in 2009. The property was burnt in February 2024 in the Bayindeen bushfire . Fortunately all the sheds, tree crops and house were saved.
The property has included a nursery for at least three decades, first growing perennials for the nursery trade and then local provenance native plants for revegetation projects. It is now used to produce deciduous ornamental and heirloom variety fruit trees, especially pomme fruits, blueberries, raspberries and ornamentals. The property includes a collection of over 500 varieties of heritage and some modern fruit tree varieties.
As well as quite a large mob of kangaroos, the farm includes our Maremmas Badger and Pippin, a small flock of alpacas and sheep, and the occasional marauding deer. All need to be fed regularly, except the deer.
Rob Pelletier
Well known to gardeners for his broadcasts on Melbourne and regional radio for 40 years including nearly 10 years presenting garden segments on “Good Morning Australia”, Rob has been passionate about the environment since well before it was fashionable.
Rob graduated in horticulture at Burnley in Melbourne in 1982 and has had a varied horticultural career including working with his father in the family civil engineering contracting business, running his horticultural services and commercial landscape construction business, horticultural media consultancy, and since 2008 as the proprietor of Heritage Fruit Trees at Beaufort.
Kate Blood
Kate graduated in horticulture at Burnley in 1988 and has recently retired from the Victorian Government after a 36 year career in biodiversity and environmental weeds specialising in early invader weeds. Kate has been helping with the nursery since its beginning.
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