Grow West was yesterday proud to receive the Mayors Award in the Moorabool Shire’s ‘Australia Day Community Event of the Year’ for the Grow West Community Planting Day (2010).
Now in its fifth year, the Grow West Community Planting Day has attracted more than 700 volunteers and planted over 35,000 indigenous seedlings. It offers locals the opportunity to come face-to-face with some of the environmental challenges landholders face, as well as gain insight on how revegetation work being carried out is having an impact in our water catchments.
“Last year’s event was hosted on the Ingliston Park property just outside of Ballan, which is part of a large scale revegetation project managed by Grow West and Melbourne Water,” Helena Lindorff from Grow West explains. “The project, which has revegetated 110 hectares of land and fenced 12km of waterways, is part of the Myrniong Biolinks project; an area that has been identified as an important ecological starting point within the Upper Werribee Catchment”.
The community planting day plays an important role for Grow West in achieving its long term goal to revegetate 10,000 hectares of degraded land within the Upper Werribee Catchment. It helps towards creating biolinks to connect native vegetation between the Lerderderg State Park, Werribee Gorge State Park and Brisbane Ranges National Park, improve waterway health and provide long-term control in the fight against weeds, rabbits and erosion.
The Grow West Community Planting Day is held each year in July.
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