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As one of three gardeners tending 30 acres on the Peninsula campus, Kevin Beale can usually be found somewhere in the grounds tending his favourite eucalypts or giving free gardening advice to anyone who needs it.
Born into a Gippsland dairying community, Kevin and his family moved to the city when he was a child. But after trying out office work when he left school, Kevin's passion for the land precipitated his mature-age apprenticeship in horticulture in the 1980s.
Kevin recalls how the gardens at Peninsula have changed since his arrival at the campus 14 years ago, when much of the campus was still virgin bushland. Despite having received many compliments about the grounds over the years, Kevin claims the gardens are "simply a work in progress".
In keeping with the Peninsula's coastal vegetation, Kevin's program of mass planting has created pleasant theme areas such as the fern gully where native plants regenerate naturally. The gardens also now sustain their own resident populations of New Holland honeyeaters, butterflies and ringtail possums, among others.
Kevin and wife Brenda live in Frankston, where they tend an exotic garden "just for a change". They have three adult daughters, two of whom studied nursing at Peninsula, and are proud new grandparents to baby Shannon.
- Lisa Pawlicka
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