Urban Forest Plan

Our Urban Forest Plan

The City’s Urban Forest Plan aims to protect the existing green spaces and trees and progressively grow and diversify the City’s tree population for adaptive climate management and amenity; to collaborate effectively to plant, plan, design and sustainably fund programs to create a resilient urban forest. The Plan was endorsed in 2017 and set the target number of trees to be planted across the City over 10 years, with the objective to increase the tree cover canopy cover up to 20%.

Read the full plan

The Goals of the UFP are to:

1. Engage: Engage residents, businesses, community groups and government agencies in educating and facilitating ownership of the urban forest.
2. Protect: Protect the existing and future urban forest.
3. Grow: Grow the urban forest towards the target of 10,000 new trees in 10 years and increase the ratio of trees per person.
4. Diversify: Diversify and promote resilience in urban greening and the urban forest.
5. Manage: Manage urban greening through the development of a coordinated and comprehensive adaptive climate management and funding strategy to ensure the long-term health and sustainability of the City urban forest.

Our Tree Planting Program aims to deliver our Urban Forest Plan objective to increase canopy coverage by planting new trees on street verges, parks and natural areas. The City’s annual tree planting program runs from May to September each year and includes a range of tree species (see table below for common trees species the City plants). Residents who are scheduled to receive a tree on their verge this year will receive a notification letter from the City.

The following table provides a summary of the Urban Forest Plan implementation of tree planting noting the target set by Council in 2021 for 80% of trees to be planted in streets and parks.

*Note: the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial year budgets for tree planting and natural areas revegetation were reduced due to cost savings enforced at the commencement of Covid-19.

**Note: The year 7 and year 8 tree planting targets were revised to 600 trees by Council in line with operational resourcing and capacity. In year 7, the decision was made to remove 65 trees prior to planting as they were Polyphagous Shot-hole Borer host species.