Berri Barmera Council, South Australia, played host in November 2019, to the inaugural Riverland Councils’ Street Tree workshop.
Treenet Director, Glenn Williams said the successful event offered ‘punchy take home messages and practical best practice hints during the power packed half day Tree Workshop’.
Treenet is Australia’s pinnacle urban tree research and education cluster which, for 20 years has organised an Adelaide-based annual symposium for the first Thursday and Friday in September.
For the past three years, Berri Barmera Council has sent representatives along.
Small regional councils cannot afford to send all their relevant workers, so after the 2019 symposium a plan was hatched to bring up-skilling knowledge to the Riverland.
Workers from Riverland councils, members of Land Care groups, volunteers who assist in looking after council trees, plus ten employees from Mildura Rural City Council, Victoria, brought the total attendees to 120.
Keynote speaker was Dr Greg Moore OAM, former Principal of Melbourne University’s Burnley College Institute of Land Food Resources, regarded as Australia’s premier educator on the ‘urban forest’.
Also speaking was Australia’s leading authority on Eucalypts, Dr Dean Nicolle OAM, a consulting arborist, botanist and ecologist, who saved the iconic Adelaide Oval fig trees during the Oval’s re-development.
Drainage Engineer, Mitcham Council, Russell King, shared his experiences on a project using permeable paving on paths and roadways to channel water off the road and into the root zone enhancing tree growth and preventing pavement upheaval.
Managing Director of Specialty Plants, Melbourne, Hamish Mitchell, explained AS 2303 – the Australian Standard on how Tree Stock for Landscape use must be prepared and presented for sale.
Representatives from the Mildura Rural City Council have since put together a proposal to run a similar event in the Sunraysia region.
Berri Barmera Council acknowledges that their involvement with Treenet symposiums was the vital link in making the Riverland Councils’ Tree Day a success. Berri Barmera Council would like to acknowledge the organisational assistance of former councillor Linc Gore.
