Native plants lend colour

Out on the corner of Arthur and Deepale roads, near the Geraldton airport, stand the impressive new buildings and gardens of the Central Regional TAFE’s Technology Park.

The first thing you see are impressive colours of kangaroo paws massed at the front entrance.

One aloe plant is still flowering after an amazing display in recent months.

The cleverly designed native plant colours of yellow, red, green and blue enhance the darker greys of the buildings.

“How did this all come about over here and when was that?” I asked campus manager Craig Jerrard.

“We were able to source funding through the Royalties for Regions program and with the support of the Mid West Development Commission we sourced $9 million for this facility,” he said.

The Technology Park occupies 2ha of the total 7.5ha land available.

“With the gardens, we wanted to have native plants, but wanted to have something different to the standard natives, so we have gone for a sort of desert design,” he said.

“Like a Phoenix, Arizona-style with gravels, aloe and cacti-type scenario. We also planted a lot of native kangaroo paw, with grass trees and eucalypts. Then, rather than use natural mulches, we have used river rock, quartz, gravels and brick chips as well. Natural mulch has to be continually replaced.

“We have tried to make this campus as low maintenance and as waterwise as we could by using sub-surface irrigation and those mulches. There is an ATU system in place, which recycles all black water which is pumped on to certain segments of the gardens.

“Even though the gardens are pretty amazing the way they look, we still intend to use a minimum of water. There is a bit of turf to make it cooler in summer, which also has sub-surface irrigation.”

The project was developed about two years ago and the principal architects were Plan E from Perth. They provided the plans but the layout and colours were chosen from Geraldton.

Mr Jerrard said that one of the great things about the gardens was that at various times of the year, different plants were flowering and the colours were designed to offset the buildings.

Luke McColl, of Midwest Turf Supplies, was asked to landscape the project.

“The irrigation is netafin drip line systems, which uses hardly any water,” he said.

“The plants are waterwise and Craig specified what to plant.”

Brendan Sekuloff looks after all the gardens and they are looking very green, healthy and colourful.

It is worth a drive to see.