Over winter, a few generous members of TCL’s Adelaide studio volunteered their time on the weekend to join planting days along Panalatinga and Serpentine Creeks, helping establish vegetation that forms part of the broader Urban Creek Resilience and Recovery Project.

TCL is working with Design Flow and the City of Onkaparinga on the rehabilitation of the two urban waterways. The project has a simple but ambitious vision to rehabilitate creeks, regenerate ecosystems and enhance community life. The work seeks to improve riparian and aquatic habitat, water quality and ecological connectivity, while strengthening these creek corridors as green spaces for the surrounding community.

The landscape strategy responds to the different conditions along the waterways, establishing grassy woodland, riparian, wetland and freshwater stream communities. Native trees, shrubs, grasses, sedges and groundcovers have been selected to strengthen habitat, stabilise creek environments and support a greater diversity of wildlife.

For the TCL team, the planting days were also a chance to experience the project at a completely different scale, one plant, one hole and one muddy pair of boots at a time.