Wagga City Council is encouraging residents to take advantage of the council’s free seedlings giveaway. Photo: Wagga City Council.
Residents of Wagga are being offered free seedlings to fill their garden with native plants that will help attract birds and other beneficial insects.
As part of the Wagga City Council’s One Tree for Me Project, the council is giving away seedlings at the Tolland Shopping Centre.
The One Tree for Me project aims to plant one tree for every resident, or 65,000 native seedlings, throughout the Wagga region over the next six years.
The council’s environmental education officer Christina Reid said the council wanted to take the hard work out of deciding what the correct natives were for people’s backyards and had carefully selected plants that were indigenous to the local area.
“This means the seedlings you receive will thrive in our climate and are perfect for attracting birds and insects, including bees, that are also indigenous to the area,” Ms Reid said.
“By adding these seedlings to your garden, you’ll be helping to boost our region’s biodiversity as well as filling the space with beautiful new plants to enjoy over the coming years.”
The council has sourced the seedlings from local nurseries and this year’s offerings include a selection of shrubs, ground covers, and one tree variety.
Ms Reid said the council would try to provide a mix of easy seedlings to grow, and the varieties of seedlings were different each time, depending on their availability.
Wagga City Council environmental education officer Christina Reid and Wagga Nursery propagation manager Shane Astridge inspect seedlings ahead of the giveaway program at Tolland Shopping Centre. Photo: Wagga City Council.
“We’ll be handing the seedlings out from now until the middle of spring, as this is the time most conducive to planting, so aim to get them into the ground as soon as you can,” she said.
Ms Reid and Wagga Nursery propagation manager Shane Astridge inspected the seedlings before Wednesday’s giveaway.
From the first year of the One Tree for Me project, the council has distributed more than 12,000 free seedlings to the community.
A series of seedling giveaways will be held across different locations in Wagga.
“We try to choose locations where we can reach the most people, such as supermarket car parks or other high-traffic areas, and we announce these locations a few days before on the Sustainable Wagga Wagga Facebook page,” Ms Reid said.
The One Tree for Me seedling giveaway will be on Wednesday, 27 July, from 2 pm to 6 pm (or until all the seedlings are claimed) at the Tolland Shopping Centre car park.
There is a limit of five seedlings per household.
For more information, contact Ms Reid on 1300 292 442 or visit One Tree for Me.
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