 Another early Victorian Forester, John La Gerche, established a nursery in sawpit gully at the rear of the Victorian School of Forestry at Creswick later in 1887 and also began repairing forests scarred by gold mining.Both Ferguson and La Gerche experimented with a number of conifer species to determine their suitability and adaptability.These pioneering foresters discovered that the physical properties of native forest hardwoods were unsuitable for some applications and plantation-grown softwoods offered the chance to replace expensive imports of Baltic Pine, Oregon and other timbers with domestic supplies.