Landscaping
SALI Awards
and bark chips. Life Landscapes has its own nursery on site and makes its own mulch
by chipping woody garden clippings and prunings. In the high profile areas, bark chips
are used for cover – these are also produced on site.
On the site of the nursery, stormwater is harvested from paving and roofs, and travels
along furrows to a dam at the lowest point of the nursery site. The collected water is
then pumped up to the irrigation dam and used for the watering of the plants in the
nursery...run-off from the plants is recycled through the harvesting system. Sun City
collects grey water from the second phase of the Vacation Club. This is put through a
purifying process and used for garden irrigation.
Click here to read more
Judges’ comments
The maintenance contractors were able to tick all the boxes required for water
conservation on the SALI Award entry form: mulching, harvesting of rainwater,
water recycling, use of grey water, water storage, irrigation design elements, rain
sensors, moisture probes, choice of plant material, zoning of plants and mulching.
One of the judges pointed out that water was stored in features and dams
throughout the Sun City site. Another comment was “a very well managed site, as
all water use on site is measured on a regular and detailed basis”. The importance
of having irrigation specialists on a site of this size cannot be highly enough
emphasised, as this made an essential contribution towards good management
of water use and the water bodies on site. The Gauteng regional judges were Roy
Trendler (zoologist and nurseryman) and Christa Otto (landscape architect).
66 africandesignmagazine.com