Cheerful volunteers plant more than 500 trees at Ocean Grove

A cheerful crowd of 130 Ocean Grove residents dug into Lake Avenue Reserve in the sunshine at the weekend, planting and watering more than 500 native trees.
The National Tree Day event – one of many around the Bellarine – was organised by Ocean Grove Coastcare in partnership with the City of Greater Geelong, and partly funded by an arts project ‘blank canvas’ initiated by local John Bowman early in 2019.
The blank canvas project invited artistically inclined people to paint trees on small canvases, which were later sold at a fundraising event.
Over 150 people participated, and the cash was used to purchase trees for the planting day, with the City of Greater Geelong matching the money raised.
“People’s passion for trees is now on show both through local painting and local planting,” John Bowman said.
“Along with Coastcare and the City of Greater Geelong I was thrilled to see so many people wanting to improve the environment for native animals, birds, and themselves
“We had so many young children coming along to help out, and many of them have noted which trees they’ve planted, and will visit the reserve regularly to check on their progress.
“While there is still plenty of room to kick a footy around at the reserve, in the coming years it will look so much more like the area once did before land clearing for farming.”