G.J. Gardner Homes Ararat has been supporting our community tree planting projects since 2013, and in that time, we have planted 4,425 trees in the Ararat, Horsham and Hamilton Districts due to their generous support. That impressive number comes from G.J. Gardner Ararat planting 15 native trees for every new home built.

This year Ashley and Sally Heard and their team purchased 540 native trees for the Ararat region (Djab Wurrung country). The trees were planted at Warrak, VIC by 25 landcare members from Project Platypus Association. The planting site is part of the Mt Cole creek catchment which is habitat for platypus and rakali (native rodent). The site was previously an eroded gully that contributed sediment to the waterways.

All trees and understorey planted are local to the area including long leaved box, yellow box, messmate, swamp gum,red box, manna gum, black wattle, blackwood, golden wattle, banksia, teatree, bursaria, gold dust wattle, lightwood, totem poles, bottlebrush and sticky hopbush.

The trees will help stablilise the rehabilitated erosion gully, provide shelter, become a food source for local native animals and provide a corridor of native vegetation along the drainage line that links to other remnant native vegetation.

We had a great day, and our small team of volunteers managed to plant and guard 1,500 plants. We thank our sponsors G.J. Gardner Ararat for donating to the plant total. Every little bit contributes to big wins for our local environment.

Julie Andrew | President | Project Platypus Association