The Boots on the Ground

The smiling gent pictured is Ross Woods (widely known as Woody.) With a name like that you’d expect he’d be part of our Tree Team, but he is currently on our Parks and Landscapes Team, keeping our parks looking 'spiffy.'

Woody has mowed, cut and tended a lot of Playford's green spaces since he started working with council in 1992. He has some long credentials with verge maintenance and tractor slashing.

He's also had a stint looking after playgrounds and sports ovals – even maintaining his beloved Dogs hallowed home-ground, Central Districts Oval, many years ago. (UDOGS.)

It’s our people like Woody who are out there working, day after day and year after year, to make Playford look its best. And during spring growth, that’s certainly a full time job.

Urban and Rural Verge Mowing

As the growth over the summer of 2020/21 was a little slower this year, we didn't start back until late May early June 2021. However this year we've had plenty of rainfall during winter, so we expect spring growth will be epic on our verges, roadsides, open spaces and landscaped areas alike, so you’ll be seeing our mowers, tractors and reach slashers out and about across Playford between now and January 2022.

In a city of approximately 345sq kms, Playford has almost 700 kms of urban verges. Our verges require between four to five cuts a year, with each cut taking up to 40 days to complete to make sure Playford remains well presented and a great place to live for our community.

In addition to maintaining urban verges, Council crews slash 500 hectares of open spaces and green corridors which equates to almost 900 football ovals worth of grass, in addition to 630km of rural verges. This is managed through Council’s tractor slashing program which slashes roadsides and intersections and our reach slashing program for gullies and swale drains.

This year, our community can expect an additional cut across both of these programs as a result of Council’s 20/21 Annual Business Plan.

Maintaining your own Verge

Often, residents ask if it’s ok to maintain a Council verge, and the answer is yes. We encourage our ‘verge proud’ residents to complete an application (available at the link below. The applications process is important to make sure residents are aware of any associated risk when working on their verge. Once an application is successful, we will attach a green metal marker to your kerb to notify our verge crews not to maintain your verge on their rounds.

Our rural residents will find there are a few more things to consider in their application, like the unique terrain at the roadside boundary and preservation of any native vegetation stands - which are indicated by numbered blue markers along roadsides, depicted in the image below.

Connect with us

We are here and interested in hearing from you about how we deliver these services. If you have thoughts, suggestions, or just want to connect with us, contact us on playford@playford.sa.gov.au or call 8256 0333.

For more information about the verge mowing program, and the application and guidelines to manage your own verge go to the link below.