Australia’s native flora will flourish in Mount Annan this spring thanks to the work of environmentalist to integrate native flowers into the urban landscape.
About 20 members from Greening Australia, Camden Council and The Australia Botanic Gardens joined forces yesterday to plant native wildflowers at the roundabout on Mt Annan Drive opposite the entrance to the botanic gardens.
Natural Areas for the Camden Council team leader Grant Dell said the Greening Australia project is part of an innovative trial program to embed native wildflowers in and around urban infrastructure.
“This idea comes off the back of the success that Greening Australia and Camden Council had back in 2015 when they worked to restore the beautiful and rare native wildflowers and grasses of the Cumberland Plain to one hectare of Parrott farm reserve,“ Mr Dell said.
Mr Dell and Greening Australia lead scientist Paul Gibson-Ray devised the idea during a discussion about the absence of native species in urban areas.
“I’ve always thought that we have to find ways to integrate native biodiversity into our country towns and cities,” Dr Gibson-Ray said.
“I said to Grant one day, ‘How about we have a think about doing something different, If he could find us a roundabout I would be prepared to supply all the plants and design it and we can set one up as a trial’.”
The weekend’s project took about a year to prepare because Greening Australia had to grow all the plants as crops before being able to transfer them into the roundabout as seedlings.
“We used the seedlings from our seed production facility at Western Sydney University in Richmond, all together we used in between six to eight thousand plants all ranging from many different native species,” Dr Gibson-Ray said.
Dr Gibson-Ray said the Mt Annan roundabout makeover is about more than making the site easy on the eye.
“These plants are all functioning species and so it also provides as a small piece of habitat created for insects and lizards. It’s supposed to hold a whole heap of purposes,” he said.
“If all goes well, I’ll being showing people from other councils and hopefully the idea will take off, ultimately I’d love to see this sort of thing all over Sydney.”
Residents can expect to see it flowering in about six weeks.
