Sardinia Bay Golf & Wildlife Estate has embarked on a tree-planting project to enhance its environmental sustainability.
Trees play a massive role in cooling the climate through the carbon they store and the Gqeberha estate’s maintenance supervisor Hugh Wiblin says the programme is close to his heart.
“It’s something I am very keen on and so far we have planted 200 trees around the estate,” he said. “I have this silly vision of planting as many as 2 000 in the years ahead.”
Wiblin acknowledges that it’s not a matter of putting in trees wherever you want to and that there are protocols to be followed.
“I sit down with the trustees on the Homeowners’ Association and we plan where we want to plant the trees,” he said. “Then we draw that on a map and the maintenance staff go in to plant them.
“You also have to consider in which location to plant some of the trees because those such as the coral and wild fig can cause big problems if they are too close to a water source.
“For example, we have discovered leaks in massive water pipes, as much as 160mm thick, where roots have forced their way into the saddle connections and prised them open. So we have to be careful with that.
“And, if you plant them too near to houses, they will interfere with the foundations because those trees can be invasive.”
Wiblin says their objective is to grow trees and shrubs in the open spaces around the estate.
“There are some servitudes next to properties where we don’t want people to create roads by driving to the back of their homes, so we are planting trees there.
“This also helps with the eco aspect and long-term environmental sustainability of the estate.”
Besides trees, he says his team also plant bushes and shrubs as their small flowers attract bees.
“This works so well that we recently removed about 50kg of honey from the hives we put in nine months ago.”
Wiblin says they also grow milkwood, Cape ash and knobwood as well as bushes such as plumbago and honeybush.
“These are all grown in the nursery which we erected about a year ago and we have around 600 trees in there,” he says. “It takes about 18 months to two years of growth before we can plant them out.”
Some of these were planted in an open space before being moved to the new nursery and are ahead of the growth curve, allowing Wiblin to source about 300 trees and plants for the estate by September.
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“Then it is a case of topping up the nursery with new seedlings, so the concept of developing our self-sustainability without having to buy expensive new plants is working well.”
They also use homegrown plants to improve the golf course, adds Wiblin.
“There was a wild fig which was affecting the growth of the grass on one of the tee boxes. Instead of cutting it down, we trimmed it right back to just a stump and then used those truncheons to place between the fairways on the course.”
About 95 per cent of these have been successful, helping to differentiate between the fairways.
“It’s a long-term project so you will only see the full effect in several years, but improving the overall look of the estate is obviously one of the priorities in our planning,” says Wiblin.