Days of soaking rain provided ideal conditions for a morning’s tree planting at Chance Gully in Young.
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Twenty people, including nine children, took part in the planting on Sunday, June 21, organised by Gumtree Nursery and Young District Landcare, with the support of Young Shire Council.
Council recently removed the overgrown woody weeds that were choking out the native plants growing in the gully, then mulched the area in readiness for replanting with local native plants.
Chance Gully, which runs alongside Cram Avenue, consists of a unique Box Gum Grassy Woodland.
This woodland plant community is listed as an endangered ecological community and consists of Yellow Box, Blakely’s Red Gum, Apple Box and Kurrajong trees, as well as some wattle species, forbs (wildflowers) and native grasses.
The Young Shire is fortunate to have such a rare plant community growing so close to town.
Young District Landcare jumped at the chance of revegetating the site and will provide ongoing planting, weeding and general maintenance of the area.
As part of their Microbats in the Young Shire Project, Young District Landcare recently installed a number of microbat roosting boxes at the site.
These will be monitored over time for microbat usage.
The plantings will enhance the microbats project and complement the roosting boxes by providing future habitat, not only for microbats, but for a suite of woodland birds, mammals and reptiles that call the gully home.
As well as six species of shrubs, a number of ground cover forbs were planted, including Chocolate and Bulbine Lilies, native violets, daisies and sedges.
Eight-year-old Lydia Martin took part in the planting along with her father Fin.
“I had fun planting the trees and shrubs and learnt from Katrina Hudson how to get the tree out of the tube quickly by turning it upside down with fingers around the stem and banging your arm against your leg,” she said.
Her father Fin, a stream restoration specialist, said it was great to see Landcare joining forces with Young Shire Council to restore this stream in Young.
A Landcare supporter donated the funding for the plants, which were grown by Gumtree Nursery and Weddin Community Native Nursery in Grenfell.
Lani Weston from Gumtree Nursery applauded the generosity of the donor.
“We are very fortunate to have received this donation from a very generous Landcare supporter based in Sydney,” she said.
She also encouraged locals to join with Landcare in preserving Chance Gully.
“It was wonderful to see so many locals keen to help in the revegetation of this unique area so close to town and we extend an invitation to all locals to join us for planting in the future.”
The group will be working in the gully again for a couple of hours on Sunday, July 5 at 10.30am to place tree guards and mulch around the plants.
National Tree Day will also be celebrated there on Sunday, July 26 with another morning of planting.
If you would like to join the volunteers or would like more information, please contact Young’s Landcare support officer Mikla Lewis on 0401 936 176 or email youngdistrictlandcare@gmail.com.
