There’s something particularly fitting about an arborist and his team, who don’t just work with trees but go out of their way to plant them too.

Cutting Edge Tree Management is a Ballarat-based team of qualified arborists who spend their working days removing, pruning and caring for trees across the region. It’s hands-on, skilled work that requires a genuine understanding of and respect for trees. So when it came to giving something back, planting 500 native trees felt like a natural next step.

Although we’re in a business that often involves cutting down trees, we love trees and see that as part of managing trees in an urban environment, that tree removal sometimes is the best option. As in, where possible we’d avoid cutting down trees unless they pose a significant hazard to a site. We were excited to recently spend a day out planting trees with Fifteen Trees and hope to build on that relationship into the future.

Damien McKnight | Owner | Cutting Edge Tree Management

On Sunday July 19th at Darley, VIC, Damien and a couple of team members from Cutting Edge Tree Management, joined over 200 community members for a Grow West planting day.

On Wurundjeri Country, at Werribee, VIC at a former plantation site,  people arrived from all corners – local scout groups, a geocaching group, Friends of Werribee Gorge, Friends of Long Forest Mallee, Moorabool Landcare Network, Bacchus Marsh Lions Club, the Victorian Mobile Landcare Group, the Victorian National Parks Association and the Shah Satnam G Green S Welfare Society. A remarkable cross-section of community, united by a single morning of planting.

This was Grow West’s Community Planting Day – an annual event that has become something of a fixture in the local calendar, and one that means far more than the trees it puts in the ground. It’s about care for Country, connection between neighbours and the kind of collective effort that reminds you what a community can do when it turns up.

And turn up they did. By the end of the day, 3,500 native seedlings had been planted across Bald Hill Reserve – 33 species in total, including Drooping Sheoak, Tree Violet, Common Everlasting Daisies, New Holland Daisies, Austral Bluebells, Chocolate Lilies, Wallaby-grass and Spear-grass. It’s a diverse and deliberately chosen mix, designed to rebuild the under-storey that a plantation site lacks and to restore the kind of layered, functioning ecosystem that local wildlife depends on.

Koalas move through this landscape. Swift Parrots (one of Australia’s most critically endangered birds) have been recorded in the area. Little Eagles hunt overhead. Every seedling in the ground at Bald Hill Reserve is a step toward giving these species more of what they need, that is, a connected, healthy, biodiverse native habitat spreading across the Moorabool landscape.

Grow West would like to thank Fifteen Trees and the organisations such as Cutting Edge Tree Management, that contribute seedlings to projects like this. Without this type of support, we wouldn’t be able to have the significant impacts that we do in connecting habitat throughout the middle to upper Werribee catchment.

Lindy MacRaild | Partnerships Coordinator | Grow West.

The Moorabool Shire Council has already done significant work at this site, and the Grow West planting day builds beautifully on that foundation, increasing biodiversity, improving habitat connectivity and ensuring that Bald Hill Reserve continues to grow into something genuinely extraordinary.

Thank you to Damien and the team for your assistance with providing not only funds for 500 of these trees, but some people power to plant.

Writer: Colleen B. Filippa

With a background in Environmental Science from Melbourne University, Colleen is the Founding Director of Fifteen Trees. In 2009, after 20 years in secondary and tertiary education institutions, Colleen left the classroom to start the company. Fifteen Trees is a social enterprise assisting individuals and companies to reduce their carbon footprint by supporting community groups such as Landcare, and environmental networks.