Today saw the launch of the brand new GroNATIVE app designed for South East Queenslanders by Natura Pacific, Griffith University and the Queensland Government.
The event was a great success with the Minister for Innovation the Honourable Ms Leeanne Enoch formally releasing the app to the public at Griffith University’s Red Zone at Southport. Natura Pacific’s director Mr Kieran Richardt along with app content researcher Dr Rochelle Steven then presented their thanks to the Queensland Government for funding the project, and then demonstrated how the app works.
The Minister revealed the importance of such apps in modern Australian society as a vital link reminding us of our sense of place and connection to the evolutionary and cultural past of the Australian nation. The app also provides us with a way of preserving our future too by promoting the use of native plants to restore native biodiversity, preventing exotic garden plants becoming environmental weeds, helping link corridors of vegetation as ‘green belts’ and increasing our resilience to climate change.
GroNATIVE is a free app designed to help anyone with a bit of space to create a native garden bursting with life. From balcony to back-yard, or from acreage to restoration area, the app provides a purposeful and easy way to make your property look great using native plants.
The tool was co-ordinated, written and compiled by Natura Pacific, designed and coded by Griffith University and funded by the Queensland Government. The first release version ‘GroNATIVE South East Queensland’ focuses on over 400 plants native to the South East Queensland bioregion that spans the coastal ranges between Gladstone and the New South Wales border at Coolangatta and inland to Toowoomba.
The app is applicable to the some 3.5 million people living in this biodiverse and unique corner of Australia. With over 16 garden styles and 40 native ecosystems to get inspiration from, the app allows users to search for the most appropriate, resistant and beautiful native plants to use on their property.
GroNATIVE South East Queensland makes it free, easy and fun to design your perfect native garden. From bottle-trees to booyongs and from native limes to giant orchids, an updated list of native nurseries will help you locate where to buy your plants from.
We hope that this app will inspire people to plant more native vegetation on their properties, giving them both year-round pleasure and interest, but also reinstating vitally-important habitat and corridors for our local wildlife.
DOWNLOAD HERE – Google Play OR App Store
