Local Beauty Lockdown Challenge Results!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered our Emu Creek Landcare local beauty photo challenge! And the adult winners are....

Category 1 Native Lockdown Friends

Michele made a new friend up on Gossan Hill

Category 2 Native Plants

Alice took this beautiful shot of a nodding blue lily up on Gossan Hill

Category 3 Floriade in the Burbs

Rachael shared the magic of our mini Belconnen Floriade

And Mila took out the youth category with her lovely photos below.

Local Beauty Lockdown Challenge

How to bring wildlife into your garden

Did you know that to attract native birds and insects into your garden, it is important to create different layers of "structure"? The variety of structures in an area affects the local biodiversity.

To create optimum urban habitats you need different layers - ideally five:

• tall trees
• tall and small shrubs
• ground cover and grasses
• leaf litter and ground structures (e.g. rocks and logs)
• bare ground

I am on a mission to attract smaller birds/wrens to my garden. What would you like to see thrive in your local area? 

For tips in attracting local birds see: https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/how-to-attract-native-birds-to-your-backyard/100005282. 

Helping to reduce heat in our urban areas

Have you ever been walking down near Belconnen lake and then wandered back up to Belconnen town centre and suddenly felt like the day just got several degrees hotter?

Trees and water make a place cooler.

Our landcare activities are helping to reduce heat, and we can do more to help.

Check out this article about urban heat, its impacts, and what can be done to lessen it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-01-24/heatwaves-sydney-uninhabitable-climate-change-urban-planning/12993580

Attracting more birds to belco

One of the things I love about living in the Emu Creek area is all the birds that come to visit...

Whether it is down by the lake....

Or even in my front yard...

What sort of birds do you get at your place? Are they all large? 

We are hoping our Emu Creek landcare activities will also attract smaller native birds to the area.

This article has some tips about how you can help - even in your own back yard.

https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/how-to-attract-native-birds-to-your-backyard/100005282   

What did we achieve in year one?

The  Emu Creek Landcare Group was formed in March 2020. 

Despite the challenges of 2020, a considerable amount of work has been done since then towards creating new habitats for our local wildlife, in an effort to eventually restore Emu Creek in Belconnen.

Most of the work was done by residents of Renny Place, or other Belconnen locals. Activities have included mulching, planting, weeding, helping bring Floriade re-imagined to Belconnen, a corporate planting day, and communications, including community consultation.

The group is associated with the Ginninderra Catchment Group (GCG) and received a grant, managed by GCG, most of which will be spent on an autumn 2021 planting. But we are pretty excited at what we have already achieved in a relatively short time, as outlined below.

I am also excited to report that, as a result of the Emu Creek group starting up, there is renewed interest in a proposal in the Belconnen Draft Management Plan to create a wetland on the oval. 

The ACT Labor party has committed to funding a feasibility study, and we await the budget for details. How amazing would it be to have a wetland like the one in Lyneham in our local area!

Achievements:

• over 20 locals have registered with the group, and others have joined in activities on a casual basis - with more than 450 hours of work undertaken
• great feedback received from other locals and passers-by who appreciate the plantings and local action to address climate change
• a continuous area of around 2,000m², on the eastern side of Emu Creek, is now mulched, planted, or a no-mow area, with a further 2,400m², mostly treed, further north, also a no-mow area
• several hundred shrubs, grasses and forbs have been planted in these areas
• some 50 large trees [eucalypts, casuarinas] have been planted, mostly outside the areas mentioned above, mostly in small beds also containing shrubs [wattles, banksias, callistemon] and grasses/forbs
• the wet spring has seen a massive regrowth of native grasses
• as well as the self-sown native grasses, at least 4 self-sown eucalypts have been protected
• two grass experts, Ken Hodgkinson and Michael Mulvaney, have done quick inspections of the site, and recommended additional species to plant

Water:

• Much more water is now retained on the site, rather than entering storm water drains with organic material - improving the water quality in Lake Ginninderra.

Costs: 

• There is considerable saving to government since there is less to mow. While there was some government involvement in the tree planting, it was considerably less than if they were totally responsible

Biodiversity: 

• There has been a considerable increase in plant diversity, and there are fewer weeds. 
• It appears that the are also more insects, but as yet there is no evidence of an increase in other animals, such as skinks or small birds.

Carbon: 

• Each of the 50+ trees will, over time, absorb tonnes of carbon. 
• Unmown grass also retains more carbon, and less mowing means less carbon from petrol.

Emu Creek Landcare Group - what do we do?

We are a neighbourhood group, working to improve the open grassy area west of Renny Place, near the intersection of Eastern Valley Way and Belconnen Way, in Belconnen. We work on bush regeneration, weeding and plantings with the support of the ACT Government, and have a bit of fun while doing it :)

Other endeavours include tackling African Lovegrass, establishing a “tool library”, and setting up habitat boxes for microbats.

We even contributed to the recent Floriade in the Suburbs. Did you see our flowerbeds? #belcopride.