When Matthew Robertson arrived in Dalby a few years back, he brought expertise and a few tricks with him: one of them was how to make a new planting almost bullet-proof. Very useful, because even though this part of Queensland is technically classified as humid and sub tropical, in reality its climate is drier as well as being either hotter or colder depending on the time of year.

Looking at the amount of recent planting that’s gone on thanks to the Western Downs Regional Council, it’s lucky Matthew knows how to buffer them against stress. Nearby, the Chinchilla Botanic Parklands has opened, a brilliant public open space where every plant was planted with TerraCottem. Then there are the thousands of plants (530 45lt trees and 8,890 shrubs and ground covers) already softening the landscape alongside the Warrego Highway at Darby: in this case 900 kilos of TerraCottem were pre mixed into 600 cubic metres of soil, laid out with in-line irrigation, then planted as a strip.

This (above) is the easy way to mix 900 kilos of soil conditioner into 600 cubic metres of soil. It’s then fast work to spread and plant out along a highway (below).

And here’s another neat trick (below), developed along the way to streamline the process of planting mature trees, 2,440 at last count. The council’s modified auger happily incorporates a measured amount of TerraCottem as it finishes digging each tree hole. Brilliant and fast.