The Bee Line Project: Victoria Gully Group’s pollinator corridor planting

Posted on 28 November, 2024 by Hadley Cole

In 2023, Connecting Country received funding through the Victorian Landcare Grants for the pollinator corridor project; The Bee Line Project. This project has involved partnering with four Landcare groups in the Mount Alexander Shire to coordinate the planting of 1600 pollinator-attracting plants with the aim of building diverse pollinator corridors throughout the region.

Research demonstrates a serious global decline in pollinators due to habitat loss, a lack of connectivity between isolated pockets of habitat and climate change. Pollinators are the bees, butterflies, flies, wasps, moths, birds and even bats that are critical to the successful reproduction and survival of many of Australia’s native plants and food crops. The Bee Line Project brings these often-undervalued species to the forefront of habitat restoration and biodiversity conservation efforts, providing a focus for local Landcare and Friends groups to work together with a common goal.

Victoria Gully Group (VGG) are a local group comprising of residents who live close to Victoria Gully, which starts in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park south of Castlemaine and meets Forest Creek at Greenhill Avenue, Castlemaine. Affectionately known by locals as the ‘gully’, Victoria Gully accommodates a range of recreation and aesthetic needs including children’s play, walking and bike riding. From the south the gully starts as a narrow, deeply-incised channel then widens to an open, grassed valley with a jumbled topography resulting from historical gold sluicing. This valley is home to a large mob of kangaroos and an intermittent unnamed creek runs along the east side.

Pollinator plants added to existing Victoria Gully Landcare Group site. Photo by Victoria Gully Group.

This year, VGG planted 300 tube stock provided by Connecting Country through the Bee Line Project. The planting plan was developed by Bonnie Humphreys from Connecting County and VGG members following a site visit in November 2023.

Victoria Gully Group members got together on 30 July and 2 August to plant the pollinator attracting plants across various sites in the “gully”. The planting included species such as Lemon Beauty-heads (Calocephalus citreus), Narrow-leaf Bitter-pea (Daviesia leptophylla), Dusty Miller (Spyridium parvifolium) and Austral Indigo (Indigofera australis) which all provide habitat and food for insect pollinators as well as having lovely showy flowers.

At the site there is an existing frog pond installed by VGG in 2017. The group decided to add further habitat value to this by adding in some pollinator attracting plant species. Group members dug out clumps of Phalaris grass to make space for the new plantings, replacing the weedy grass with indigenous plants.

Victoria Gully Landcare Group’s pollinator planting sites were considered carefully for their biodiversity value and for opportunities to extend existing habitat and create corridors. As “the gully” sits adjacent to Castlemaine Diggings Heritage Park, restoration work across this area links up to existing bushland, extending habitat corridors.

Well done, Victoria Gully Group for harnessing your people power to restore habitat for local pollinators!