What could be a more dramatic make-over than a sewerage treatment plant into a bio-diversity hot-spot? In the case of the old facility at Christies Beach, south of Adelaide, it was the most obvious step to take… Nested in one of the Onkaparinga River’s final bends before it empties out into Gulf St Vincent, the [...]
Synergy
THE QUIET ACHIEVER
Some great projects are impressive, and not thanks to a chunky budget. In this success story it’s all down to a quiet achiever. His boss describes him as proactive and forward thinking, someone who can picture the results and knows how to make them happen. He’s clearly the person you want on your team, but [...]
WHYALLA’S SMART GREEN PITS
Greening a city like Whyalla isn’t for the faint-hearted. Sitting on the Spencer Gulf, it’s described by the city’s own Project Manager Landscape, as a desert. And Sam Bourne doesn’t stop there. “It’s very arid - we get around 270mm of rain a year, and there isn’t any fresh ground water.” He goes on encouragingly [...]
FORESHORE MAKEOVER
Here’s a project anyone would love to get their hands on. It’s got it all - mature trees and funding (who ever has enough?); a crumbling car park, eroded sea walls, a community fiercely protective of their views and a front line coastal aspect that would make it tough to establish plants. Yes, if ever [...]
HAND IN HAND
If you’ve ever had all your ducks in a row, you’ll know what a brilliant feeling it is. Everything seems to speed up, nothing goes wrong, and the result is impossibly gratifying. And if you stop to work out why your working day has gone so well, it’s very likely due to three things: the [...]
TAKING THE STING FROM THE NEMATODE
If your working day revolves around turf, what’s coming next won’t surprise you. It’s a sobering example of what is being faced everywhere in the ongoing battle to maintain the green sward. As long as the general public expects to be able to run out onto a plush green carpet of grass, so an army [...]
THE PEAR-SHAPED PROJECT
Imagine that you’re standing on the sidelines, watching a project go badly pear-shaped. The reason that you are there - witnessing the unfolding disaster - is because you have a product and service to be applied at a set point in the proceedings. You also happen to have the experience and expertise that’s needed to [...]
THE BIG BUSH BLOCK
This will seem unbelievable. There’s a man in South Australia whose day-job is filled with managing horticul-ture for a local council, and on the weekends he often goes up to work on his own bush block – revegetating and weeding. Not so weird you say? Yes it is, because his block is 600 acres of [...]
THE CONVERTED SCEPTIC
“I’ve seen thousands of dollars go down that track. Had we gone this way earlier we’d still have those trees today.” In this particular instance Terry Herbert may be talking about trees, but his approach is the same for all the planting he manages. He comes across both as someone quick to spot the snake [...]
LOG-JAMS & TURTLES
If you’re in the revegetation business, and you’re good at what you do, then the chances are you never under-estimate a project’s potential to turn tricky. For example, you might be working on a level section of planting along a median strip – innocent enough until you see a trainload of returning commuters trample across [...]
