Bridgewater Lifestyle Village

The Bridgewater Lifestyle Village was designed expressly for people who are too young, too fit and too healthy to retire. Interesting concept!


Prior to the building of the village by National Lifestyle Villages, the area represented some 40 acres of farmland in the heart of Mandurah. Arboreal Tree Care was contracted to visually assess the area and recommend to the developer what virgin trees should be retained in line with a covenant placed by the seller and strict tree preservation laws by the City of Mandurah. Roads and services were to be constructed while maintaining the trees as part of the natural landscape. 70% of trees were retained.
Tree protection zones (TPZ’s) were constructed around the trees being retained to ensure that they were not damaged during clearing. We were employed to assist with fauna surveying and relocation to nearby sites. Nesting boxes were installed into retained trees support the existing fauna. All trees were thinned, crown raised, pruned to remove dead wood and shaped to make the trees safe and healthy for the proposed urban living environment.  As the village was built in stages over several years, Arboreal Tree Care was repeatedly called back to complete this task for the following stages and also on call to assist with pruning as portable homes were installed.

In this period, there was close consultation with the developer to repair damage to trees and establish guidelines for other contractors to follow when they came to work on-site. The guidelines were important because previous work completed by contractors had damaged trees and their root systems. The guidelines became the norm for other National Lifestyle Village sites and their contractors, to follow. Now and again we are requested to carry out maintenance of the existing trees or consult on tree related issues.

De-watering was part of the process required to install services for the village. The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) ordered the developer to engage Arboreal Tree Care as a consultant to monitor remnant surrounding vegetation to ensure that there was no negative impact because of the de-watering. The EPA also had concerns about the impact of the development on nearby estuary reserve land flora and they ordered monitoring on a regular basis throughout the de-watering period. A “photographic vegetation monitoring worksheet” was put into place.

In 2006 this village won the City of Mandurah Environmental Award.