Establishing Site Forests

About this pattern

Establishing site forests is a critical practice to engage communities in planting and caring for trees, and to enable coolth for future generations.

*Locating Contour Strip Forests

Broadscale site forests are best located after a Keyline analysis has located the Keyline. In primary valleys, cultivation of strips/bands for tree planting takes place below the Keyline contour. On primary ridges, cultivated strips/bands lie parallel and above the Keyline. Trees can also border roads above irrigation channels. Trees should be planted in Riparian corridors and planted surrounding water bodies.

**Preparation and planting

A specialised Keyline plough should cultivate strips/bands 4 centimetres below root depth, to aerate soil along contours. Trees should be planted as tube stock to ensure successful and rapid growth. Biodegradable tree guards and stakes are needed to facilitate moisture condensation and protection against grazing.

***Establishing Forests through Ecological Succession

Successional ecologies can be applied to forest management regimes in urban environments: rather than humans being the primary maintenance mechanism, we can start to use passive maintenance through environmental manipulation and an understanding of succession; for example, short-lived, fast-growing Acacia spp. species have been interplanted with various eucalyptus species, to encourage a faster growth rate and more upright form.***

Pattern Conditions

Enablers:

• Existing trees may be part of remnant indigenous forests that can be integrated with new forests.
• Existing trees may be components of cultural heritage landscapes, which should be kept & interpreted.
• Successional planting can also be undertaken by communities.

Constraints:

• Rehabilitation of existing forests.
• Arboriculture assessments of existing trees.
• Conformity to Commonwealth EPBC Act (1999) & NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act (2016)
• Space to establish forests in urban areas is constrained by hard infrastructure and conventions of planting single trees in road-flanking rows.

Commoning Concerns

Access: open access;

Use: shade and shelter; wildlife habitat; ecological edge effect;

Benefit: climate amelioration; soil and water rehabilitation;

Care: Bushcare; Local Government; State Department of Environment;

Responsibility: community of commoners; body corporate;

Ownership: Body Corporate/ building owners.