We paid a visit to Acacia Cove Retirement Village to talk to the gardening team about the demands and the delights of managing this 11-hectare property based in Wattle Downs.
Tell us a bit about the garden and landscaping team - they must be quite busy managing this large property, particularly in Spring?
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Being a gardener at Acacia Cove is a very big and important job. We have an incredible amount of gardens that wrap around most of our villas, which means we have more green space than a lot of villages.
Because the village is over 20 years old now, we also have a lot of beautiful, mature shrubs that line our ‘common areas’, and other areas around the village.
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Due to the sheer amount of gardens in the village, we are kept busy all year with growth and maintenance, however Spring is that time of year where we need to maintain our cobbled areas like driveways and paths, and we need to keep an eye on weed management. It can be a balancing act between doing this and general plant maintenance in the gardens.
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Our gardens are managed by two teams, and the village is split in half. Our gardeners for the east side of the village are Russell, Sparsh, Dennis, and Paul, and on the West, we have Victoria and Tima, Aka and Alex.
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We also have part-time gardeners as well. Our teams keep a close eye on their rotations around the gardens, which can take between 3-4 months, depending on the weather and seasonal demands around the village as well. Each team has around 110 villas to maintain, and that is not including common areas.
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The team leaders generally carry out tasks like weed spraying and making sure each team is staying on track for their rotation. In amongst their gardening tasks, our teams also help to move furniture for events, or assist with any maintenance jobs.
What Central Landscape Supplies products do you use and why?
Our teams have been thinking of long-term solutions to help with efficiency in the gardens. One of our team members suggested we have a bark pile available in the village to use in order to top up gardens as needed.
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We use a lot of Central’s bark, as it has helped significantly to reduce the amount of weeds we have in the garden. The bark also makes the village gardens look much more tidy as you walk around.
Central Landscape Supplies products used in these gardens include:
- Premium Garden Mix for replenishing the beds
- Forest Floor Mulch for the larger areas, as it improves the soil as it breaks down
- 20-40mm Pebbles for succulent garden areas
- GAP 7 and Paving Sand for keeping the cobblestone paving level and tidy
- Premium Lawn Soil and a hardy grass seed when re-sowing lawn areas
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Are there special requirements when it comes to gardens and landscaping for a retirement village?
We have certain areas in the village that need to be kept uniform, or they need to have a certain ‘look’, such as our village driveway, and outside the village lodge. We have chosen plants like buxus, roses, and begonias. We also have a lot of camellias in the village to achieve this look.
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Ideally you want the landscaping and gardens to be as safe as possible, and we constantly assess different areas of the village for this. We have a range of different ages and abilities in the village, and we look at each villa to see what can be improved. One example is, we are working on creating more gardens with tall pots, so that residents who cannot bend down can still tend to their flowers. Some residents in their 90’s prefer tall plants or shrubs, instead of flower beds.
As the village is mature, we have had to cut a few trees that were lifting cobbles in residents’ gardens, as this was becoming dangerous. Whenever there is a problem, our teams try to solve it, and come up with a better solution for our residents. They are always very grateful for the swift actions we take.
I believe you have a garden club - how does the gardening team assist with club activities?
Our vegetable allotments are run by our residents, which is wonderful. Our garden teams do help to maintain the area with weed spraying, or replacing trellising. If a vegetable bed needs replacing or replenishing with Premium Garden Mix, our teams are also available for that.
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Our residents get a lot of joy from their vegetables, as some people have come from large gardens previously. It is a chance for them to have some extra space outside of their own gardens, and see what others are growing.
There must be a lot of collective gardening knowledge among your residents?
There certainly is! One of our residents in particular is well known in her own garden community, and she loves to give her vegetables away, or give cuttings to people. Some residents love to do their own gardens, and we welcome that.
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Others prefer we maintain them, and that is just fine too. Some people still love their gardens, but they do not know what to do, and that is where we can have conversations to see what they want us to do.
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Some of our residents love plants like bluebells, and others love succulents. What is great about the village is that people can put their personality into their garden, and it’s fantastic to see individual styles in every garden.
Tell us a bit about the plant selection around the village. Do residents get involved in plant choice and tending of the gardens?
Our staff certainly try to listen to opinions as much as possible when it comes to how we present the village. As you can imagine, there are often many different opinions, but we try to come to a middle ground!
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For areas like the driveway leading to our village lodge, we needed something more uniform, but still colourful. We more recently put begonias in one of the entrance flower beds, and they have been very well received. They do great to suppress the weeds, and put on a lovely show in summer.
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No village is without contrasting views on things, but we always try to listen and come up with a solution that suits the area and purpose for that area. One of our residents tends to two of our gorgeous rose beds on the left and right side of the village driveway. He has carefully labelled each rose, and we get a lot of comments about it.
It is mostly our staff who tend to the gardens, and this is due to health and safety reasons, particularly gardens near roads. Certain delivery cars can come speedily through the gates, and we do not want to risk resident safety.