PREGROW CONTRACTS

Pre-grow contracts are becoming a vital part of any medium to large scale development. The scale, community voice, environmental awareness and sensitivity and need for immediate impact through advanced stock, create layers of complexity that the landscape architect will address in their design outcomes.

The landscape plans are completed many months and often years ahead of construction, but unfortunately the plant supply contract, in most cases, is not awarded until a month or so out from installation. This lack of notice means that unless a nursery happens to have the right quantity, species, container size that has been collected from provenance seed, substitutions must be made. Nurseries and landscapers share equal displeasure in substituting - no one wins, so releasing a pre-grow package early in the projects life is the solution.

The idea of pre-grow contracts has been around as long as the nursery industry and there are some examples like Sydney Olympics Site, but in reality they are rarely seen. We have profile one of Alpines current pre-grow commitments below to highlight some of the benefits.

Franklin is a new residential suburb located 10 minutes from Canberra’s CBD. Franklin will comprise of 1600 residential dwellings in a mixture of single detached, duplexes, townhouses and low rise apartments.

Alpine has already delivered over 200,000 Viro-cells, 50,000 Viro-tubes and 12,000 140mm plants, in a mixture of endemic dry-land, marginal and wetland grass species. This first consignment was planted out along Gungaderra Creek, to restore and preserve the creek line. The supply specification called for endemic species with provenance seed to the local area. Alpine was able to collect seed from a number of sources in Canberra and with adequate growing time it was very achievable. The provenance seed also ensured that while the stock was grown further north it was genetically conditioned for the Canberra environment.

The second package will be supplied in mid September this year and deals with public spaces and parklands throughout the estate. The planting includes a mixture of native trees, shrubs, groundcovers and grasses in a range of sizes from Viro-cell up to 5ltr Spring Rings. Alpine has been able to draw on the specialist resources and spread the production across our three nursery locations. Our ability to compartmentalise the project has ensured that each plant type will grow at its optimum. All stock will be centralised prior to delivery in time for it to become acclimatised to its new home.

Additional benefits to the client include the best value for money (no plants have been sourced externally), the plants are true to type, the quantities required are available with consistent plant size, no substitutes have been used and they have been grown in the correct sizes to provide the intended initial impact.

There is certain information we need to know in order to assess a pre-grow – to learn more follow the link to pre-grow contracts