Village Homes RealtyIt is always an exciting moment for the Ecovillage team when we hand over the community gardens to a new set of clusters, with landscaping, irrigation, meeting sheds and all final works completed around 24 months after the registration of the strata schemes. Bringing a strata cluster into being in the Ecovillage is a long process compared to selling a block in a regular subdivision, with each cluster being provided with around $800,000 of additional landscaping and infrastructure in each of their common property gardens. It doesn’t make sense for us to have the gardens completed at the point of sale – as it takes about 2 years for enough houses in each cluster to be occupied to enable management of the gardens to be viable.
Mike and Nathan (1B resident)
So we follow these steps on our way to bringing every one of our community garden clusters to life:
- Complete the civil construction–energy, sewer, roads, streetscapes, drainage, etc.
- Achieve practical completion from all authorities.
- Register survey strata scheme with WAPC and Landgate (e.g., Cluster 4A is one “survey strata scheme.”)
- Release and sell lots in the cluster.
- Manage the strata company for the first 15 months on an unpaid basis, covering all obligations under the Strata Act, including holding the first official AGM prior to lots being settled.
- Hand over strata management at the 2nd official AGM and provide informal support for the next 12 months as the new Strata Council finds its feet.
- Install all landscaping works, commission the meeting sheds, installing the picnic grass areas last.
- Meet cluster owners and Strata Council to hand over management of the Common Property gardens, with all plans, warranties, instructions, maintenance requirements, etc.
- Celebrate!
This year, it was the time for the Stage 4 clusters (4A and 4B) to take over management and enjoyment of their cluster gardens and meeting sheds – this was great timing, with 15 occupied homes and a further 10 homes underway in the clusters. On Friday 27th June, Mike met with owners from both clusters and spent a number of hours explaining the infrastructure, answering questions and celebrating the milestone! It was a very special handover for Mike this time, as he had personally gotten on the tools (shovel, bobcat, irrigation, etc.) in the sometimes inclement weather over a three week period (with local Ecovillage landscaper Nathan from Brightstar) to prepare and install the large picnic lawns in both clusters, completing the landscaping around the meeting sheds.
The final piece in the puzzle will be the planting of fruit trees in the netted orchard–the Stage 4 clusters will decide amongst themselves the types of fruit trees that they want us to supply in Spring and we will assist them to plant the orchard to ensure the trees are given the best possible care for a great start.
We can already see the great effort that the owners of Clusters 4A and 4B are making to care for and maintain their beautiful common gardens and wish them many years of enjoyment and productivity. It will be Stage 5’s turn this summer, marking the creation of 11 community garden neighbourhoods in the Ecovillage – from bare paddocks to thriving communities in just 5 years!
