Sponsoring trees in remote locations means taking a broad view of environmental stewardship. It means recognising that everything is connected. Munash Organics understands this connectivity and is intent on improving our soils on a micro level, project by project, site by site. But it also appreciates that its business activities aren’t without impact. And as a result, Munash has partnered up with Fifteen Trees to help reduce the carbon footprint of running a business.

Fifteen Trees is delighted to be working with Bec and the team at Munash to provide trees to some of our more remote community groups.

2020 Plantings

This year, Fifteen Trees has organised Munash Organic’s trees to be planted in the Campaspe Valley in Central Victoria. The trees (280) have been planted at Eucalcama Back Creek and surrounds by Campaspe Valley Landcare to aid in their regeneration projects.

The Campaspe Valley Landcare Group is within the area between the lower reaches of the Coliban and Campaspe Rivers leading to Lake Eppalock. The area includes the town of Redesdale and the Barfold district. It geographic centre is situated approximately 20 km North of Kyneton. The Landcare group is actively involved in projects such as protecting waterways, restoring native vegetation, preserving and enhancing wildlife habitat, building walking tracks and interpretive signage in reserves. They also establish wildlife corridors, biolinks and develop partnerships with community groups e.g. schools, while providing community education about environmental issues.

The group aims to protect large old paddock trees, rejuvenate river systems, connect biodiverse landscape, protect large areas of remnant vegetation, revegetate between large patches of remnant vegetation, revegetate the under-storey species missing from our landscape, protect roadside vegetation  and propagate and revegetate indigenous endangered flora for such species as the Powerful Owl (above), the Black Duck and the Phascogale.

2019 Plantings

Images of tree plantings often show a happy group of volunteers out in the sunshine, planting happily around easily accessible dams and paddocks. But some plantings are a lot less straightforward… Munash Organics, a Ballarat based sustainable soil improvement company, recently sponsored one such occasion high in the hills above Flowerdale.

One of the sites of the devastating 2009 bushfires, the ridges around Flowerdale have suffered from erosion since their tree cover was destroyed. This has had detrimental flow-on effects for habitat down the slopes, and there is a project afoot to redress some of this damage. Project coordinator, Claude Baxter, aims to plant at the tips of gullies on the leeward side of the hills. This means that as the trees grow they will naturally set seedlings further down, and so populate the hard to reach slopes without human intervention.

However, this wasn’t a project for the faint-hearted! A hardy bunch of eight volunteers set out to climb the dizzyingly high ridges on a sunny winter’s weekend, accessing the site via an adjoining private property. Those who made the trek planted one hundred and twenty (120) healthy, indigenous Grey Box, Victorian Bluegum, and Yellow Box seedlings in strategic spots, keenly supervised by the local wedge tailed eagles.

If you are interested in sponsoring one of our tree planting projects, we’d love to talk with you. Please contact Melinda via <[email protected]>

Article by Sarah Hart.

Sarah is an emerging self-taught 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.