From the Secretary's Desk

This year has seen great change for the committee. We were very shaken to lose our President Paul Farmer, and felt his absence in so many ways. He was a truly inspirational person who led the group with clarity of vision, and enormous capacity for work. To date we have been unable to fill the position, and continue to be open to people who would like to be considered.

Our work in the parks has not stopped, and our regular events for volunteers to care for the environment have continued.

Black Hill Conservation Park

Montacute Valley

These events have been well attended, and we have done good work on controlling rhamnus, artichoke thistle, tree erica and watsonia in the Quarry Track site. We scheduled a visit to the Raspberry Walk site to coincide with the Ornithogalum thyrsoides flowering. We have a record of Ornithogalum at this site in our historic records, and were hopeful that they had been all controlled and that we would not find any. While this was not the case, we were able to remove all the flowering plants. We also recorded the presence of the plants on iNaturalist so there is now documentation available on its location. We will need to revisit this site in 2026 to do more follow up on plants that have since grown and any that we have missed. It is always a joy to visit this site and see the flourishing native raspberry (Rubus parvifolius).

We are hopeful that we will have more news to share about the Montacute Valley site in the coming year.

Wildflower Garden

We have finally done the first complete pass on the watsonia along the boundary at the end of Addison Ave. This has taken several years to complete. While we need to revisit it in 2026, the heavy lifting has been done, so it will be following up on germination, regrowth and plants we missed.

Horsnell Gully Conservation Park.

We have removed over 130 kg of Ornithogalum thyrsoides this year, and started the process of working up the Garden Gully to work on the broom, gorse, watsonia, arum lily and of course more Ornithogalum.

We have some big plans in store for next year, so please read the separate news item about a successful grant application with Friends of Parks and Nature.

Morialta Conservation Park

First Falls

This project is going well. With the help of the Volunteer Track team a good section of the creek is now free of blackberry, broom and blackberry nightshade. Most recently we cleared the blackberry from below bridge 8 and did more work on clearing weeds from the Green Army site. While the Green army site has seen good natural regeneration, we are not seeing that below the boardwalk near the falls. We will consider supplemental planting here this year.

Fourth Creek

A lot of blackberry has been cleared from along the creek through the work of the volunteer track team and the Friends. However, regeneration has been slow, and many weeds have moved in. The prickly buttercup along the watercourse is an issue and we need to see how best we can start removing it. Care will need to be taken to ensure the creek is not opened up to erosion. Another area where some judicious additional planting might be of assistance to the natural regeneration process.

SA Trail Runners

The Trail Runners found nodding greenhood orchids at their site this year. They counted a total 52 across 9 distinct areas. The largest were clusters of 19, 15 and 8, with the rest being just a few or one here and there.

Biology Society SA (BSSA)

Continued working along the Colonial Track above Third Falls. They also set up one of our trail cameras and some extra components to their events with an orchid walk and specialist guests attending some sessions.