An Epping Road Upgrade sustainability boost for Wollert Secondary College has forged ahead with the installation of new garden beds. It follows the rollout of new bee hotels, built as part of a collaboration between the project team and Year 7 students.
The initiative aims to encourage growth of native bee populations by providing shelter from harsh weather while also helping the students learn about the bees’ important role in the environment.
The project began in July when the team worked with students at the college to build bee hotel structures from terracotta pots and materials sourced from the project site.
Victoria’s 7 species of native bees are the solitary type that don’t form colonies or hives, so the ground-level hotels provide them with places to rest, nest and breed.
The project team donated all the bee hotel materials along with flowering native plants, which were planted near the hotels to further encourage the bees’ populations.
In the second stage of the initiative, the team returned in September to donate and assemble three raised garden beds. We also provided soil to fill the garden beds along with additional flowering native plants in a further boost for the bee populations. The college will use the garden beds to grow vegetables and herbs, which will begin supporting the college’s home economics program next year.
Following the initiative, which included a presentation on building the hotels and identifying native bee species, students have reported sightings of the distinctive bees on the college’s grounds.
The bee hotels are a sustainability legacy initiative in collaboration with our construction partner McConnell Dowell. Legacy projects such as these aim to provide long-lasting community benefits beyond improved road infrastructure.
The Epping Road Upgrade will benefit the college’s community with increased safety and travel reliability to and from school. The project will add lanes in each direction between Craigieburn Road East and Memorial Avenue. It will also improve six intersections and connections for pedestrians and cyclists.
The upgrade will provide safer, more-reliable journeys for the 35,000 drivers who use Epping Road daily in Melbourne’s north.
Completion of the Epping Road Upgrade is due in 2025.