Green Your Area
Planting the right kind of plants around your home can provide many benefits. We encourage all Campbelltown residents to plant a tree on their own property, or several smaller plants, if you just have a balcony.
It’s good to think about what particular benefits a tree could provide before you select and plant, for example do you want one that will provide:
- Fruit?
- Shade and cooling for your home and yard in summer, but allows sunlight into your house in winter?
- Habitat now or in future for birds and other creatures?
- Screening and privacy from your neighbours or the street?
- Or one that you can hang a swing from for the kids?
Here is some information to help get you started in greening up your patch:
The Adelaide Garden Guide provides small garden designs and planting ideas to help make it easy to meet the new landscaping requirements for new homes and renovations in metropolitan Adelaide. The principles and advice is applicable to many shapes and types of properties, especially if you have moved into a property that was subdivided and has limited potential planting space.
It includes:
- checklists for designing, planning, planting and maintaining your garden
- different garden designs to suit your style
- how to provide the best environment for your tree
- tree selection to match property and space available
- examples of small, medium and large trees – native and exotic
Gardening is not only a great way to add a little green to your home, it’s also a way to create a cooler, greener and wilder Adelaide that better responds to the impacts of climate change. Plus, nature is great for our wellbeing.
In Green Adelaide's Greening Hub, you’ll find a range of gardening information from choosing the right pot plants for your patio, to a step-by-step guide on building green walls, and tricks to attract birds, butterflies and bees to your yard, plus more.
Tree canopies are vital for helping cool our urban areas in hot weather, either through direct shading or cooling of the air via evapotranspiration through leaves.
Check out the Urban Heat Mapping to see this cooling effect in action.
These effects are at their best when the tree is in good health so looking after our trees is very important. This is why we are implementing Water Sensitive Urban Design across our city to help provide enough water to our trees for them to thrive.
The verge, sometimes referred to as a ‘nature strip’, is the part of land that council owns between the road and the boundary of your property. If you don’t have a street tree on your verge and would like one, you can Request a Street Tree.
You also have a chance to help green, cool and build connection with your neighbourhood by improving this space. Campbelltown’s Vibrant Verges program aims to help residents to green up our streets through replacing dolomite or compacted earth with garden loam and appropriate plantings.
Why not invite your neighbours to work together on greening up your street?
In December 2022, Council endorsed its first Urban Forest Strategy, which sets out our plan for growing, managing, protecting and sustaining our existing urban forest.
See the trees in your area on our Interactive Urban Forest Map!
We have increased our street tree plantings to 1,200 each year, and through community planting days and our regular horticulture and biodiversity program we plant thousands of trees and shrubs in parks and reserves.
National Tree Day in 2023 saw 150 participants plant 930 trees, shrubs and groundcover along Fourth Creek. Watch the video to see the community in action.