A bunch for the birds and the bees
Photo credit: Haley Kigbo
A highlight from the recent Wildflowers Australia conference in Echuca included a day spent touring local flower farms. A visit to Zoe’s Little Flower Farm in Gunbower highlighted how commercially farmed flowers and foliage can ultimately benefit the local wildlife and local environment.
As a registered wildlife carer, I rehabilitate injured and orphaned animals so they can carry on being wild. Releasing animals is a bittersweet moment in any carer’s experience. When animals are hand-reared, the odds of a long and healthy lifespan are reduced, despite all your best efforts to create wild creatures. At some point you must leave them to survive on their own.
What makes for a more successful release is good habitat. That means the right types of plants for food, shelter for nesting, and the right conditions for reproduction — and not too many predators. Introduced species are the worst.
So how does this relate to flower farming? The importance of a healthy ecosystem for healthy wildlife populations was evident during a recent farm tour, as part of the Wildflower Australia Conference in August.
As we drove through northern Victoria, cutting through endlessly straight and flat canola and dairy chequered country, it was clear that the region is dedicated to broadacre agriculture – at the expense of biodiversity and habitat.
Zoe’s Little Flower Farm is on another big-paddock farm – in this case, sheep. But in the middle of the giant grassy paddocks, four hectares have been reserved for Zoe McNair and her father John Poll’s native plantings. Zoe’s farm is a great example of what can happen when the value of natural capital is factored into farming, and pastureland is regenerated with wildlife-friendly plant species.
The business’s motto — to create an environment where biodiversity, native flowers/foliages, lifestyle and productivity can thrive – has been a motivating factor behind their choice of varieties and general farm-related planning decisions. For the family, creating the flower farm was as much about ecosystem restoration and creating wildlife corridors as it was about developing a commercial enterprise.
The first section of the farm was planted out in 2003. A new section was added in 2018 with a mix of eucalypts, acacias, banksias and hakeas. As we walked along the rows, Zoe explained what plants worked, and what had struggled, with accompanying commentary by native species whiz, Neil Marriot. At one point we stopped alongside an Acacia cultriformis in full flower, the bush heaving with bees. In a landscape marked by pasture, it was an energy-rich pit-stop for pollinators during a tough time of the year.
“You can’t discount the joy and the value of growing in this way,” says Zoe, describing how they witnessed an abundance of birdlife return to the area after the plants took hold, a wetland area was created and wildlife corridors were developed. “But it wasn’t just the birds – it was also the spiders and insects that the birds fed on. Suddenly the place came to life.”
Photo credit: Rita Feldmann
Supporting healthy farms through biodiversity
Biodiversity and climate change expert and SFN advisor Dr Elisa Raulings explains that integrating wildlife corridors around cultivated areas not only boosts biodiversity, but also benefits agriculture through disease control, pollination services, erosion control and frost protection.
“All plants sequester carbon, but trees and shrubs over two metres have a particularly important role in mitigating climate change,” Elisa says.
However, Elisa says revegetation shouldn’t just focus on trees. “The understory and mid-story often provide the greatest biodiversity gains, so paying attention to these types of plants in addition to trees ultimately results in the best outcome.”
Elisa says that farmers wanting to improve biodiversity on their farms should consider three things: the size of the patch, how connected the patch is to other patches and how the planting can complement the selection being cultivated.
For wildflower and native growers, this might mean reducing wind speed in the cultivated paddock by planting protective trees and shrubs upwind. In turn, these plantings can improve soil condition, offer protection for sensitive flowers and decrease frost damage, as well as boosting on-farm biodiversity.
Photo credit: Haley Kigbo
The benefits flow to humans too
Economists and other policy-makers are increasingly using the term “natural capital” to describe the value of services nature provides us with, such as clean water and air, healthy soil and plants for food, medicine and fibre. A healthy environment means healthy humans – and the impacts spills over into adjacent ecosystems. If we are to successfully address the environmental challenges presented by the ‘Triple Planetary Crisis’ of pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss, all industries need to look beyond economic value and factor in natural capital.
Another service nature provides us with is emotional well-being. Most of us feel a sense of calm and connection to the earth just being in nature and watching wildlife.
Zoe acknowledges that although she is selling the cut flowers commercially through both local and domestic markets, the farm’s production levels are nowhere near that of bigger, commercial growers.
“But for us it has always been more than just producing flowers,” Zoe continues. “We wanted the place to feel beautiful and we wanted to create an asset for the local environment.”
