Creating beautiful organic gardens

Maintaining healthy ecosystems and open spaces that our community love to enjoy is one of council's main priorities.

Balancing this commitment with cost effectiveness and innovative solutions can be challenging. Council also balances the desire to establish robust closed loop waste solutions throughout its processes to provide a healthy and sustainable Sunshine Coast.

In the past, council used synthetic fertilisers that over time depleted the soil profile. Four years ago, we decided to move towards using organic fertilisers. The garden waste collected by council from the maintenance of its parks and gardens is converted into compost through a process of grinding and left to mature over many months. Once this product is matured it is ready to be blended with soil or sand and applied to the gardens.

5851m3 of mulch produced in 2021/22, all of it was used on our parks and gardens in some form, either as a top dressing to turf management, in garden beds or street tree planting.

This program has assisted council to improve parks that previously had no scope for soil improvement.

Using an organic approach boosts nutrient depleted soil profiles, increases the plants ability to suppress disease, and reduces chemical use and in turn gives greater moisture retention. It is estimated a $50,000 saving over the last 2-3 years has been achieved by supplementing the organic content of the topdressing soils.

Using this approach enhances ecosystem health and keeps the parks and gardens looking their best for everyone to enjoy.