Sowing the seeds for a sustainable future since 1989.

The Leaflet | March 2025

As Autumn marches in, our growers and coordinators (along with many others in the TreeProject puzzle) lie at the heart of our mission, bringing thousands of indigenous seedlings to life. This season, they're growing an incredible 162,000 seedlings, and we couldn’t be more grateful. One grower returning after 26 years, says, “Four house moves and two children later, we finally have the space and time to grow again.” How good is that! Thank you all—your dedication makes fulfilling our mission possible.

Thanks as well to our valued long-time volunteer, Alan Collard, who grows, then diligently photographs and updates our seedling database, capturing the full range of species grown by our dedicated volunteers at each stage. If you’ve seen our seedling database, you’ll know this is a huge task, and we truly appreciate Alan’s hard work and dedication.

We’re also excited to share with thanks that TreeProject has received a generous donation of a trailer from the Poowong Landcare Group, which will be a great asset.

Message from the President, John McRae

The growing season is in full swing and both Autumn and Spring Growers are completing their Seedling Growth Reports so we can monitor growth and ensure that surpluses are used to cover off any shortfalls. Thanks to our dedicated Coordinators who try to shuffle seedlings around to ensure we can deliver a full set of boxes.

The TreeProject committee recently spent a full day planning out the year. There was great enthusiasm and, after much discussion, we set the priority areas as fundraising, grower recruitment and seed management. At a strategic level, we also looked at implementing a hub model that would allow us to cover all of Victoria rather than just Bendigo and Geelong. We also looked at transport options as we will need to move lots of boxes from point to point. If anybody has a good understanding of how the transport industry works and/or has contacts who could help TreeProject, please contact me.

Volunteers are a crucial part of TreeProject and I am keen to increase social connectedness for TreeProject supporters. Please contact me if you would like to run a local meetup, an education/revegetation session, a tour to previous plantings or other form of supporter connection.

John McRae, president@treeproject.org.au

There’s still time to get involved! No experience required, and all are welcome.

Join us Fridays through to the end of March for hands-on seedling growing. Stay for a session or the whole day! Learn new skills, connect with others, and make an impact.

Seedling Transport and Logistics

We’re also looking for transport contacts to help us with the transportation and distribution of our seedlings at the end of the growing season. If you have any logistics contacts or you yourself can assist with transporting seedlings via trailer, please reply via email. With thanks.