Spencer Quirk
2024 | Horticulture
“I want to travel to the Middle East, in particular Dubai, as I would like to explore the different ways that industry leaders are making positive changes to our cities, by building industry connections with people from global companies.”
Being a Global Footprints Scholar will provide me with an experience to learn from leading industry professionals in urban cities across the globe, to explore how plants grow in our everchanging environments and connect with the industry trailblazers that are reshaping the way we use our city spaces to promote sustainability by greening our urban surroundings.
I used to work at Junglefy and still have a burning passion for urban greening our cities, surrounding communities and infrastructure. I would love to gain a deeper understanding of how urban greenery is being adapted in major cities around the world to incorporate a more sustainable life with Biophilic designs at front of mind.
This scholarship is an amazing opportunity for my professional learning and growth, as I can apply and expand on the knowledge acquired from my TAFE Certificate II Primary Industries Horticulture and Certificate III in Horticulture. This will also support me to network with like-minded professionals and build industry connections.
In addition, I believe this scholarship will be an incredible life experience to learn, grow and explore, as I will be travelling for the first time by myself, which is very exciting for my personal growth.
A Global Footprints Scholarship is your opportunity to do more of what you love. What have you done at work that you are proud of or passionate about?
I am very passionate about plants and the positive effects they have on people’s wellbeing, as well as our environments. In 2020-21, when I was studying year 11 and 12, I also completed a TVET course at Ryde TAFE, a Certificate II in Primary Industries Horticulture. I was very proud of my studies, which resulted in me being nominated as a finalist at the TAFE NSW Excellence Awards in 2022 where I was awarded the TAFE NSW Agribusiness Student of the Year Award.
A recent achievement that I am really proud of is starting my own small landscape business for design, construction and maintenance. Projects range from small back yards featuring a permaculture focus to designing and constructing shared garden spaces throughout a unit block. This was made possible from my studies at TAFE, and my time and experiences, as an employee at Junglefy.
When I was studying at TAFE in 2020, I gained an interest in urban greening with a particular focus on green walls, and this led my research to find Junglefy, the nature-based solutions company located in Sydney. I was then employed by Junglefy when I graduated high school. Throughout my time at Junglefy, I worked across all operational areas of the business and worked on a range of projects across the nursery, construction and maintenance teams including the Apple Store on George St Sydney City, Daramu House, Barangaroo, Junglefy's Community Greening at Penrith Public School, Manly Vale Carpark, Castle Residence Luxury Apartment and Hotel, and WestConnex Roseville Interchange. I would regularly work on maintenance at the Manly Vale Carpark, which included the world’s first Roating Junglefy Breathing wall. It had panels that can rotate and fold in to make working on the wall and moving modules simpler, plus it provided clean air, reduced noise and increased biodiversity with 9,000 plants, which is 60m2 of greenery.
Castle Residents Luxury Apartments and Hotel in Bathurst Street, Sydney City was my first construction site that I worked on. It involved having to work on harnesses like most of my maintenance jobs. However, this project also involved working with a group of labour hirers and the Junglefy site manager. It was an eye-opening experience, and I enjoyed every minute of it! On this project I had to step up and become a leader, as the site manager on this job found himself spread too thin across the site as we were understaffed. When it came time for the plant installation in the garden beds and roof top garden, he assigned me levels 32-37 of the luxury penthouse apartment garden beds and gave me the site plans and 8 labours. He trusted me with the tasks at hand, as he could see I could read and interpret a planting schedule and the landscape architect's plans, and I was one of the few people that had a strong plant ID skill. I got the planting finished within the week and won the annual Junglefyer Award for Power in Connections. For the Westconnex - Rozelle Interchange, I worked across the Junglefy Nursery, where I was propagating, planting and growing green walls and I was called upon by the construction manager from Junglefy to co-project manage the Westconnex project. This project involved hanging mega modules to the Westconnex chimneys and these were big architectural structures that were coming out of the new tunnels. On this project, I was also co-managing at the nursey by overseeing the inventory of the plants that where being grown for this project and was responsible for the shipping coordination of the modules that made up the mega modules. This project was a super exciting project and showed me key skills in communication and improved my confidence as a leader.
A Global Footprints Scholarship is for you if you are passionate about creating a sustainable future. Describe something you have done at work or are working on, that helps the environment. Why is it important to you?
When I was working at Junglefy, I worked on Daramu House Barangaroo, which means Treehouse in the local Sydney Aboriginal language. This project is a green roof located in Sydney City in Barangaroo constructed by Junglefy and was an experiment lead by UTS to show the importance of green roofs, by comparing the roof of the similar building next door. Both buildings have over 300 solar panels, however one roof is concrete, and the other is a green roof with over 10,000 plants, mostly Australian natives. The study showed that on a 30 degree day the concrete rooftop recorded temperatures over 60 degrees, whereas Daramu House recorded temperatures just under 30 degrees and their solar panels were operating at an ideal temperature of 25 degrees. So, from this trial, the solar panels on the green roof performed 20% more efficiently at peak times compared to the solar panels next door, which showed that the plants were significantly improving the productivity of the solar panels, as they were creating an ideal environment for the panels to operate the most efficiently.
Daramu House’s design helped to reduce the amount of storm water runoff and limited the water pollution in our waterways. Samples taken from water running through the green roof media and substrate showed a reduction in heavy metals like nickel, lead and cadmium compared to water runoff on the concrete roof. This suggested that the green roof is filtering and absorbing these pollutants before they make their way out into our stormwater and the waterways of Sydney Harbour.
Another benefit of this green roof design is that the water is slowed and reduced, as the water makes its way down through the roots and substrate instead of running off flat concrete. This helps to decrease the strain on our cities’ drains, helping to reduce flooding events, as the green roof will slowly release the water compared to the concrete roof. So, in the event of a once in 5 year storm, the concrete roof will release 700 litres of storm water per second, whereas the neighbouring green roof releases 7 litres per second.
Daramu House roof top garden also encouraged a large influx of biodiversity, as its design aimed to attract a wide range of insects, bugs, birds and living things, which was recorded by stationed cameras to catch them in action. For instance, with the activity of insects brought a range of birds who came to feed on these insects, then came predatory birds to pray on the smaller birds. These results where outstanding for the team, as it was so exciting to see that there was this much action happening on one green roof in Sydney’s city.
There was even the rare sighting of the native Blue-Banded Bee, which was very impressive. The results demonstrated that over an 8 month period the plants on Daramu house had a massive performance of a 20% increase in efficiency at peak times compared to solar panels without greenery surrounding them. This excess renewable energy can then be sold back into the grid and this converts to generating an additional 9.5 MWh or $2,595 over the 8 months. The green roof also showed that it can help with urban water management strategies, as it slows the movement and amount of polluted water from entering our water ways and can be a mediation to slow the effects of flooding. The biodiversity seen on a green roof in a city demonstrates that even in the most urbanised places, you can still find wildlife coming to visit the garden spaces. Therefore, this trial proved that green roof designs should be included in the building of our urban spaces, as green roofing can reduce/limit polluted water from entering our water ways and surface temperatures can also be reduced. Plus, the solar panel efficiently can be increased, and biodiversity can be introduced back into our cities. This job was not only important to me but also highlights that creating and maintaining sustainable green spaces is valuable for the future of the globe.
As a BBM Scholar you can choose to go anywhere in the world. Where will you travel with your Scholarship and why?
I want to travel to the Middle East, in particular Dubai, as I would like to explore the different ways that industry leaders are making positive changes to our cities, by building industry connections with people from global companies.
I would love to learn from these companies how they are contributing to a sustainable future and learn new skills that I can hopefully bring back home to implement in our urban spaces, work places and everyday life.
Dubai is a leader in sustainability, and this is a city that has urbanised quickly and experienced massive growth in a short time due to their endless wealth. Dubai has led the world in architecture and design, which has also had to account for their extreme living conditions. People have always been drawn to Dubai due to its shear lavish lifestyle and high roller living, but in the last 20 years Dubai has had a shift towards a green approach to their new developments by using renewable resources to support net zero goal.
As early as 2010, it incorporated a series of green building regulations to require sustainability standards in government structures. Dubai’s leadership in this also aims to transition the city’s energy to 25% renewable and 75% clean sources by 2050. If this can be done by 2050 the city would have the smallest carbon footprint in the world.
These new sustainable cities being built in the UAE and Middle East are showing the rest of the world that it can be done, especially Dubai, as they are showing that even in their harsh environment, they can still develop green urban spaces with smart planning and plant selections.
I would also like the opportunity to go to Dubai as I have there are more and more biophilic designs coming across their desks, and more biophilia is being included into work, community and education spaces as people are needing to be close to or associated to nature.
The use of green walls is not only beneficial to the environment but are also mentally and physically reconnecting us back with nature, which is a big industry shift across the globe that I really want to go and explore.
In addition, Dubai is host to hot and dry conditions making it limited to what can be grown in this climate. Although these conditions prove challenging, it has not stopped innovated companies to greenify the city and surrounding areas.
For instance, Schaduf are an inspired green solutions company based in Egypt, UAE Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Netherlands. Their mission is to be the global leaders in green and sustainable solutions and with the vision to provide inspired green solutions that elevate the quality of life through social and environmental change.
Other companies like Planters Horticulture are the Gulf’s largest full-service landscaper that specialise in design, installation and maintenance, and Sempergreen are a large global company specialists in their field of green walls and green roofs with their headquarters in Netherlands and offices in locations all over the world, even including a nursery and office outside of Melbourne and an office in Dubai. These companies are examples of industry leaders that I would love to learn about how they are contributing to creating a sustainable future in urbanised life.
"Spencer is highly passionate and engaged with horticulture. He will learn an enormous amount and in turn can use that knowledge to the benefit green infrastructure in Australia. "
– Global Footprints Assessor Panel