Street tree management plan
Street trees are an important asset across the City of Whittlesea and provide many benefits to our community.
In 2019 we adopted our new Street Tree Management Plan, 'Greening Our Streets'.
This plan guides us on how we will choose, plant, maintain, protect and value urban street trees.
Current state of our street trees
We currently manage around 137,000 street trees.
In December 2015, we completed an inventory of our street trees which included 79,624 street trees that come under our management.
Our inventory process revealed the following:
- Each year we remove around 1,700 street trees because they are dead, dying or have a higher risk.
- We plant around 2,620 new street trees each year as part of our planting program.
- Due to the large amount of growth in our municipality, we receive approximately 5,500 extra trees per year that were previously managed by developers.
- The two most common species of street trees in the City of Whittlesea are Wallangarra White Gum and Yellow Gum.
- There are 275 remnant of protected street trees, most are indigenous River Red Gums.
- A total of 60% of our street trees are under 5m tall.
- A total of 87% of our street trees have a useful life expectancy of over 41 years.
Our tree management tasks
We have six key tree management functions.
1. Selection and planting
We undertake the planting of trees along streets and roadsides using the right tree, in the right place.
2. Risk management
We assess trees located on our land and implement any works based on any hazards or risks identified.
3. Maintenance programs
We implement both proactive and reactive tree maintenance programs to ensure that street trees are well managed.
4. Protection
We protect all existing street trees within our municipality where possible.
5. Removals
We will only remove trees that meet the tree removal criteria, which you can view in our Street Tree Management Plan.
6. Value
We attribute a dollar value to street trees, charge appropriate cost recovery fees and acknowledge that their value appreciates over time.
The Street Tree Management Plan
Our Street Tree Management Plan, 'Greening Our Streets', includes:
- an assessment of the current state of our street trees
- Street tree management code
- information on how we manage tree risks
- details on our tree maintenance programs, including clearance requirements for pruning
- steps taken in tree root damage investigations
- how we manage pests and diseases
- our process for dealing with requests for tree services
- street tree protection requirements for developers
- a new street tree species list.
Download the plan
Download the Street Tree Management Plan(PDF, 3MB)
Download the Street Tree Management Plan - accessible(DOCX, 3MB)