Competitive planting

On first meeting, you wouldn’t necessarily describe Geoff Hayter’s gentle manner as competitive. But it must be in there somewhere, because the co-founder of Biodiversity McLaren Vale (BMV) has shown a steely determination over the past fifteen years to outlast and outcompete some of the region’s most tenacious invaders. We’re talking weeds.

Geoff says it all started when his now partner Tess Sapia boarded a yacht in the Galapagos Islands in 2004. An environmental scientist from California, Tess hopped aboard the ‘Sorcerer II’ (owned by Dr Craig Venter who played a major role in sequencing the human genome) on the Pacific leg of its journey before disembarking in Australia. ‘We bumped into one another at a music festival,’ recalls Geoff, ‘and I happened to say to her, “if you get to Adelaide, look me up.” And here we are.’

Together they moved to a secluded property near Willunga. Fatefully, the property hosted a segment of the Willunga Creek, though it was hard to tell at the time so dense were the weeds choking its flow. ‘We decided we couldn’t live here on this property with a weed patch down the bottom there,’ says Geoff. So began fifteen years of work to restore this small segment of creek.

One of Geoff’s maxims is that a big job is a lot of little jobs. And this certainly rang true for the crusade he and Tess waged to wrench the invasive dog rose from the creek, cutting, pulling, untangling and then hauling away heap after heap. Geoff estimates they’ve removed 1000 cubic metres of dog rose and planted between six and seven thousand indigenous plants along 350 metres of creek.

Through the work on their property, they came to learn about other work happening around the district, including the Natural Resoures Management Board (then the NRM, now Landscape SA) and Bunti Pellen’s tireless work with Trees for Life. But they couldn’t help noticing how much was still to be done.

‘Eventually I called Jock Harvey because I kind of faintly knew him. And I said, what Tess and I are doing down here, we need to do on a bigger scale. And Jock was right into it, because that’s Jock Harvey. He’s a can-do man,’ says Geoff. ‘So we went and saw Dana Miles at the NRM and she was into it too and so I guess the three of us started this program.’

As the name suggests, BMV’s vision is about increasing biodiversity, particularly through removing olive trees and their old foe the dog rose. But its mission is true to the work that started on Geoff and Tess’s property – de-weeding and replanting the three main creek lines (Pedlar, Willunga and Maslin) in the district.

BMV started with the idea to ‘do more’ and so they started organising field days, weeding and planting depending on the season. Today, they draw between 60 and100 people on the first Sunday of the month, but in the early days they were lucky to get a handful of volunteers. They relied heavily on the commitment of a small number of people, including Dana Miles. ‘Frankly it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been there,’ says Geoff.

Through their field days, they’ve now worked on nearly sixty privately held sites across McLaren Vale, including Shingleback Winery, where they’ve planted over 15,000 plants, Pannell Enoteca and Dowie Doole. Of course, a sustainability initiative must itself be sustainable to really make a difference. ‘We’re not a free service, we don’t just come out and do stuff for nothing,’ explains Geoff. ‘It’s not a commercial deal, but there are responsiblities. They pay us money and the program runs for three years.’ Three years is enough to make a real difference, but, as Geoff repeats on several occasions, it’s not a matter of set and forget. Give olive trees an inch and they’ll take a mile.

As the organisation has matured, their thinking has turned from simply ‘do more’, to ‘do more, do better.’ They want to create long corridors of re-planted land, creating linkages between properties. They’re also aware that to truly leverage their efforts, they need to partner with other organisations and have begun talks with SA Power Networks, among others. Geoff really comes alive when he starts talking about, of all things, roadsides. ‘We could turn McLaren Vale into the world’s biggest insectary if we had all the roadsides cleaned up and planted with endemic species,’ he enthuses.

The effort Geoff and Tess have expended weeding and planting their own property is both an example of the tremendous challenge BMV faces, as well as the incredible payoffs. The individual frequencies of seven species of microbat have now been recorded on their property. ‘I feel like the whole ecology of the creek has fundamentally changed and it just shows up in every way when you’re down there,’ says Geoff. ‘I saw something out the front the other day, I don’t know what it was, a pardalote maybe? But it was the tiniest bird I have ever seen.’

Walking along their patch of creek, among the sheoaks now reaching several metres, the purple blooms of native violet and the whimsical drifts of spear grass, the transformation is astonishing. And then suddenly, Geoff stoops down and before you know it, he’s pulled a thin sapling out. Another olive tree bites the dust.