What better thing to do on a wet weekend in June than plant trees for the Saving our Superb Parrot initiative.

Sure it was cold, yes we got a little soggy but most importantly we had fun AND enjoyed some tasty home-made treats to keep us going.

Bron and Andrews property borders the Western Woodland Way – a bird super-highway that encompasses Conimbla and Nangar National Parks, making this a fantastic site for boosting habitat connectivity.

Growing Trees & Community Connections.

As you see we had no shortage of volunteers to help us get trees in the ground, trees that had been lovingly grown my Mid Lachlan Landcare committee member Will Johnson.

We experienced an up-tick in tree-planting volunteering last year thanks to our Bupa-funded Glossy Black Cockatoo project. In addition to boosting bird habitat, the project targeted community health by encouraging people to come and get involved in on-ground projects such as these.

We ended up planting approximately 2200 trees & shrubs across 7 private land holdings, engaging 70 volunteers for a total of 310 planting hours.

That project wrapped up in September last year but our communities enthusiasm for a good day of digging and planting has remained strong! Since then we’ve started up our ‘working bee‘ events where willing volunteers can come and help plant, care for & grow trees whenever they get the urge! So far we’ve managed five on-ground days with activities ranging from recycling old tree-guards & weeding to replacing failed trees and planting new habitat. That’s approximately another 45 volunteers putting in a total of 170 volunteer hours and we don’t look like stopping any time soon!

How did last years Glossy Black Cockatoo Plantings fair?

Once we’d got enough holes dug, I took myself off to the plot we planted last year to do a quick tree audit and see how the She Oaks had faired – last year’s project was focused on planting for the Glossy Black Cockatoo.

What a great success with a 70% success rate on average after what’s been a tough weather year!

While this planting was focued on the Glossy’s and therefore featured a lot of She Oaks, we’d also planted a range of Eucalypts, some Kurrajong, Wattles, Tea Tree’s, acacia’s with a view to creating high value habitat as well as future feed trees.

I couldn’t believe how well the She Oaks (Allocasuarina verticillata, drooping She Oak) had grown with several reaching shoulder height on me (approx 1.4 meters). The worst performing patch was a waterlogged section in the middle of the planting which returned a 40% success rate but overall, the plants had done very well and were being supported by some existing shrubs planted several years earlier as part of a Greening Australia direct seeding run.

Thanks so much to all of you who came along to help, to Bron and Andrew for making room on their farm to plant these trees and to Will for growing such fabulous local plants.