School Tree day

School Tree Day Overview

The official title for the day was “School Tree Day” organised by Planet Ark.  The event was held on Friday, 29th July from 2  – 3.30pm at Port Melbourne Primary School.  Key highlights from the day:

• The area planted was the two lengths of garden beds that run alongside the school oval on Clark and Poolman Streets.
• Originally the area had been fully landscaped but unfortunately over time many of the plants have been destroyed due to the kids trampling over them when they go to retrieve their balls from the area. 
• The aim was to plant approx. 300 donated tubes of native shrubs and grasses in the areas that are now bare and install tree guards around the smaller plantings to protect them until they reach maturity.
• ‘School Tree Day” was carried out by approx. 55 x volunteers made up of students from Garden and Environment Clubs, parents, teachers and Bunnings staff. 
• Bunnings kindly donated the following scrubs and grasses along with some hand shovels, watering cans and an assortment of adult and child gardening gloves which we are very grateful.
• In preparation for the event Anthony and Spiros laid out all the donated shrubs and grasses along the garden beds ready for planting by the volunteers.
• At the commencement of the tree planting event Anthony gave a quick presentation to the volunteers outlining the purpose and objectives of the day.  David, Bunnings provided a demonstration to the volunteers on how to correctly remove the plants from their pots and plant them into the ground.
• We broke the students up into groups of approx. 5 to be allocated to either a Parent/Teacher/Bunnings volunteer.  Each group planted approx. 25 plants, watered and added their tree guards over the allocated time.
• “Keep off the garden“ signs were erected to hopefully deter the kids from going onto the garden beds.
• Anthony and Spiros double staked all the tree guards for extra protection and with the help of lunchtime students watered and fertilised all the new plantings.
• Going forward the Garden Club volunteers will aim to regularly water, fertilise and mulch the newly planted garden beds with the support of maintenance staff.