By: Michael Fox

It’s a stunning winter morning, everyone has huge smiles. An amazing community team have come together to create a Wildflower Walk.

This is the first step in restoring local native species to create a Pollinator Link habitat to attract and feed birds, bees and butterflies back to Mt Gravatt Showgrounds. The long term strategy includes progressively removing alien species like the invasive Chinese Elm while creating frog habitat and shady picnic areas.

A team from Ausco Modular joined our Tuesday Bushcare team and community members to plant a diversity of local native herbs, shrubs and vines with different flower colours and flowering times covering the whole year. The plants will provide caterpillar food for sixteen different butterfly species as well as nectar for adult butterflies, birds and native bees.

It was a real pleasure meeting this energetic positive Ausco team and learn more about their organisational values which are reflected in this quote from Jenny Winckworth, Sustainability & ESG Lead:

Ausco Modular builds and hires out modular buildings and also provides accommodation in more rural areas, mainly for mining clients. Ausco Modular buildings have less embodied carbon in them than traditional builds, can be used multiple times (the average is 20) and are 96% recyclable. As part of our ongoing commitment to the environment in which we live and communities where we operate, we’ve committed to reducing our carbon emissions by 2.5% per annum based on our 2020 baseline and are actively investigating ways of reducing our waste to landfill and water consumption. We also encourage our staff to volunteer in the community during work hours.

Having community members join the planting team added to the positive atmosphere. Laurie, Heather and Benno (Fox Gully Bushcare team) organised a real production line with a group digging holes: crowbars were required in places, others followed on with water, water crystals and fertilizer tabs. Plants in the team barrowed, bucketed and raked a thick layer of mulch to manage weeds, retain water and keep the soil cool: cool temperature is vital for the macrofauna like earthworms, microfauna and microflora, such as protazoa, nematodes, and fungi, which maintain soil health.

Thank you to all our energetic volunteers and particularly group leaders Laurie, Heather and Benno who did most of the work organising the event and Alan for the photography.