Kell Funerals in St Arnaud has been helping the district say goodbye to its people since 1860. A business just doesn’t last that long without a strong connection to the needs and values of the community.

It will come as no surprise to learn that since 2014, Kell Funerals also gives back to the local environment by organising the planting 60 trees every year with Fifteen Trees. We are now at 560 trees for this caring company.

Slaty Creek, VIC |  60 trees | 2022

This year’s trees were planted at Slaty Creek, VIC. The 60 trees were a mix of purposefully selected plants to complement the birdlife, insects, and other creatures who call The Grampians their home. The trees were also selected to survive the cold winters and dry summers the mountainous terrain experiences. They will grow to varying heights (tall and understory) to ensure a variety of habitats for the local wildlife (including some of the bird species shown below).

We are thankful for the expertise of the Buloke and Northern Grampians Landcare Network in their support in helping to plant these trees. Here’s an interview, we recently conducted with Andrew Borg, coordinator of this network.

Redbank, VIC |  60 trees | 2021

Kell’s trees this year were planted by the Buloke & Northern Grampian’s Landcare Network in the tiny town of Redbank, VIC. A small group of friends, who all moved to this district in the past few years, all got together to plant the 60 trees. Namely, Hannah & Andrew, Melissa & Greg and Merryn.

Their properties all border the little Central Victorian town, backing onto various remnant bushlands.  The planting of eucalypts will provide long-term additional habitat for native wildlife, shade for the soil, and generally make the area more beautiful, while wattles, emu-bushes and paperbarks were planted in existing bushland to provide some much-needed undergrowth.

Coonooer Bridge, VIC | 60 trees | 2020

This year, Kell Funerals contribute sixty trees to a regeneration project in nearby Coonooer Bridge.

Coonooer Bridge is a tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town in the Mallee. The Avoca River runs through it, and a nearby wind farm, the first in Australia to include community ownership, bears its name. It’s also home to a biodiversity extension and understory planting project.

Hundreds of years of European-style farming have left parts of the Mallee and Northern Grampians in a dire state. The lack of tree and shrub cover is not only hard on the native fauna, it also exacerbates the effects of drought and impacts on the health of the river. Regeneration projects that nurture understory plantings and link up habitat areas are essential in the ongoing effort to restore balance to the landscape.

The native plants contributed by Kell Funerals will be planted by volunteers from the Buloke and Northern Grampians Landcare Network. The project is hoped to develop into a complex ecosystem that will flourish for decades, if not longer. It will provide somewhere safe for birds and animals to live and move through different territories, as well as add to the overall biodiversity of the region.

We think this has a beautiful synergy with Kell Funerals’ core work. Saying goodbye to our loved ones can be so hard. How heartening to think that part of them lives on in the goodwill of the region they called home.

Somewhere, not too far away, a living plant finds its feet and settles in for generations worth of service to its community.

Just like Kell Funerals itself.

Writer – Sarah Hart.

Sarah is an artist whose passions include the stories and experiences of women and narrative driven creative work. Her aim is to delight, to reveal glimpses of everyday beauty, and to celebrate flights of the ordinary. Sarah works across a range of media, with an abiding interest in pen and ink, mixed media and the human form. You can find Sarah here.