Do you give a root about salvaging Unley’s tree canopy? If you do then I recommend you do two things now. Right now.
The first thing I am asking you to do is to read the rest of this blog post and follow its direction to Council’s website. In other words, please give a root.
Most Unley ratepayers and certainly readers of this blog site know how hard we have been working to address the loss of tree canopy suffered over the last decade. You would also be aware that we cant achieve our goals without your help and participation. The reason is that 80% of the City of Unley is privately owned.
To assist you, we have developed a new information resource which is live on our website. This is a tool to assist you and all private landholders to select appropriate trees for their property. There are 31 factsheets of popular tree species including a variety of sizes and a mixture of native, ornamental, and fruit tree ideas.
To help address the questions you and your neighbours have been asking around “can you suggest any trees that suit the local area?”, we have developed a simple tree selection list.
Check them out on the website here or you can use the address unley.sa.gov.au/trees
Next, the second thing I recommend you do is to visit the Unley Museum. We have on display a fun, informative, and interactive exhibition about our humble leafy friends, trees. The Who gives a root about trees? Do you? exhibition.
The exhibition should surely motivate you to plant a suitable tree on your property as part of your contribution to solving our loss of canopy cover. And a hard copy version of the information available on our website will be available at the exhibition.
Hi Don, The tree tool is a great resource. I would suggest an addition to it: given that a lot of people are scared of root impact, if the fact sheets could talk about that too it would help people decide what they can plant.
I was interested to see that of the 10 advanced trees we planted in April 2019, we have several on the list, including Forest Pansy, ornamental Prunus, Crabapple.
Our own experience is that our Forest Pansy, much as I love the idea of it, is struggling and we are wondering if it needs to go.
Spot on Cathy.
I have already spoken with the officer responsible for compiling and suggested the very same thing. Other things like propensity to drop leaves etc need consideration.
She is conscious of this and gave an undertaking that the list was always executed to be one that “grows.
Could I also suggest that as well as these fact sheets, which are a great start, that the Council sets up an online community space where residents can share their experiences of what’s worked and not for them treewise.
Another good observation. I will pass it on.
Oh and one more: Standard gardening advice is always to walk around your area and see what’s growing as a start, but especially if you are inexperienced, you don’t even know what you are looking at. I love the idea of guided tours just walking along the streets of Unley looking at front gardens with this in mind. It could be that people who are experienced gardeners might volunteer to take a group and if it were small, then it wouldn’t be intrusive to the households whose gardens were briefly looked at and discussed. Or, if necessary, people could opt in to letting their front gardens be perused from the footpath – I’m not suggesting people would enter their property!
Another good suggestion. One taht would require some resourcing even if using volunteers.
Once again, I will pass it onto the officer involved and to the volunteer group “grow, grow, grow”. It may be something they might like to consider.