Grow with Arborgreen

Our previous blog post discussed different options to protect our revegetation projects from predators who find them tasty. However, the guards used to defend our plantings could be creating a new environmental threat.

The planting stage of your revegetation project may be complete, but it isn’t just you who will enjoy your new seedlings. A wide variety of native and domestic animals will enjoy them too. And they will enjoy eating them!

Hot dogs, doughnuts, chocolate, soft drinks. Yum! All are delicious in small quantities but ultimately damaging to our health if consumed in excess. Too much of a good thing is, well, too much. Even overconsumption of healthy foods can cause health problems. And the same is true in the plant world. Overconsumption of beneficial nutrients can also cause health problems for plants.

You've finally arrived at the exciting part of your project. You've identified your Major Vegetation Group (MVG), selected the species of plants that best represent the vegetation association you are trying to recreate, completed your weed control, and you're now ready to start getting some plants in the ground. This is where you begin to see big things growing from tiny little seeds!¹.

From an Olympic event to the AFL grand final to tendering for a business project, competition is a part of life. It drives success, highlights failure, and separates the weak from the strong. But competition isn't always on an equal footing. You wouldn't enter a baby into a 100-metre sprint, neither would a grade 3 student withstand as CEO of a national company.

It goes without saying that a penguin won't survive in a desert, and a snake won't survive north of the Arctic circle. All living creatures are suited to a particular habitat with a specific set of environmental requirements. The same basis applies to plant species selection for your revegetation project.

In part 1, we covered the planning of plant selection, weed control and the planting or seeding process. In the second part of this post, we focus on three more planning stages to consider when developing your revegetation project plan, namely fertilisation, tree protection and site maintenance.

"Prior planning prevents poor performance", as the saying goes. No one builds a house, starts a business, or makes an investment successfully without a plan. A solid, well-thought-out plan is a critical element of any successful venture, and the same applies to your revegetation project.

In the 1970s, Joan and Eileen Bradley established the widely accepted principles of bush regeneration, now known as the Bradley Method of Bush Regeneration. Born into a family of scientists and armed with perseverance and a lot of hard work, they developed these principles through trial and error.

This informative revegetation blog series walks you through each step of a revegetation project, from start to finish. In part 1, we uncover how to determine what you want to achieve through your revegetation project.