Luminare is a tower on Festival Place in Newstead with the planting built into it. Garden beds run up the balcony edges the full height of the building and creeping fig spills down over the podium. It is one of the greener buildings in Newstead, and none of that planting can be reached on foot.

Abseil Pro was brought in to bring the whole lot back under control: a full prune of every inaccessible bed on the tower, top to bottom, worked on rope from the roof.

At a glance

Location

Newstead, Brisbane

Services

Urban garden vegetation management

Access

Rope access, rigged from the roof

Frequency

One full prune, two days on site

Photos

On site

Luminare tower at Newstead with planting running up the full height of the balcony stack — Planting runs the full height of the tower.

Looking up the planter stack on the Luminare facade at Newstead — Every one of those planters is inaccessible from inside.

Rope lines running down the planter stack on the Luminare facade before a prune — Lines set down the full stack before work starts.

Abseil Pro technician on rope beside the Luminare planters above the streets of Newstead — On the rope between planter levels.

Technician working a planter at Luminare with a second technician reflected in the glass — Two technicians working the same planter level.

Rope access technician loading prunings into bulka bags hanging from the rope at Luminare — Green waste goes into the bag, not over the edge.

Technician on rope at Luminare with green waste bags hanging beside him at a planter — Bags hang off the rope while the planter is cut back.

Looking up the Luminare planter stack with a technician and green waste bags part way up — Working the stack one planter at a time.

Abseil Pro technician on rope beside a Luminare planter cut back off the glass — Cut back off the glass and the balcony edge.

Technician reaching into an overgrown planter at Luminare where growth has reached across the glass — Growth across the glass before the prune.

Rope access technician clearing an overgrown planter at Luminare into a hanging bag — Clearing a planter that had run well past the edge.

Technician working inside a planter bed at Luminare with prunings bagged beside him — In the bed, with the cut material already bagged.

Bulka bags of green waste from the Luminare planters staged ready to come off site — Every bag comes down with the crew and off site.

Ropes rigged from the Luminare rooftop pool deck with a technician going over the edge — Rigged off the rooftop pool deck.

Luminare planter stack after the prune with growth cut back clear of the glass — After the prune, back off the glass.

Creeping fig hanging over the podium edge at Luminare with the glass reflecting the afternoon light — Creeping fig over the podium edge.

The job

Pruning a garden nobody can stand in

The planters are set into the face of the building. There is no path behind them, no balcony you can lean far enough out of, and no lift that gets near them. Everything in those beds is cut by a technician hanging beside it.

What the prune covered

Every inaccessible planter on the tower, from the podium up

Growth cut back off the glass, so units get their windows and their outlook back

Growth cut off the building itself before it works into joints, sealant and window tracks

Dead wood, hanging roots and leaf litter pulled out rather than left sitting in the beds

Every bag of green waste carried down and taken off site, nothing dropped and nothing left behind

How it ran

Two days, worked from the roof down, one bed at a time. The crew holds position at each planter level rather than passing through it, which is the difference between a prune and a trim at arm's length.

A qualified arborist and a horticulturist are on the team, so what gets cut is a decision about the plant rather than a decision about what was easy to reach.

How we get to it

Rigged off a rooftop pool deck

The roof at Luminare is not a plant room, it is the residents' pool deck. Rigging on a terrace people are using on a Friday afternoon means the setup has to be tidy, contained and out of the way, and the ropes have to run where nobody walks into them.

Working off an occupied roof

Anchors and edge protection go in where they do not cut across the deck, ropes are covered where they cross a walking surface, and the rig comes down at the end of each day rather than staying out overnight.

Below the drops is a podium garden, a footpath and the neighbouring building. Exclusion zones go in under live drops with a spotter on the ground, and the crew work one face at a time so nothing is fenced off for longer than it takes.

How we leave it

Tools tethered, and green waste bagged on the rope rather than dropped

Bags carried down and taken off site the same day, not stacked in a corner for somebody else

Ropes and gear off the pool deck at the end of every day

Exclusion zones and signage set up before a drop starts and packed away after it

Waterproofing and irrigation problems in the beds photographed and reported

Photos uploaded the same day, so the record exists whether or not anyone asks for it

Why rope

The alternatives do not reach

Planting on a facade tends to be maintained badly, because maintaining it properly is awkward. The usual answers are a gardener leaning out over a balustrade, which gets the first half metre and nothing else, or a lift, which cannot get near beds set into the face of a tower.

The consequence arrives slowly. Growth reaches across the glass and residents lose the outlook they paid for. Stems work into sealant joints and window tracks. Dead material builds up in the beds and holds water against the structure. By the time it is obvious from the street, a prune has turned into a removal and a replant.

A rope crew reaches every bed on the building in the same visit, so the planting gets cut where it needs cutting rather than where somebody could reach.

Outcome

What the building gets

The planting reads the way it was drawn again: green along the balcony edges, not green across the windows. Units on every level got their glass back, and the beds came out of it with the dead material taken away rather than buried under new growth.

The other thing the building got was a look behind the planting. Every bed was inspected while the crew was in it, and anything worth knowing about, waterproofing, irrigation, growth into the structure, was photographed and written up. On a building this green, that is the part nobody can see from the ground and nobody else is going to check.