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Planting Street Trees

More videos about street trees

Street Trees can help to cool the local environment on hot days, and are often planted in cities around the world, ranging from Paris to Auckland, and from Chicago to Tokyo . 

So why are there so few street trees in Perth Australia? Of course, there are street streets in many of the older areas of the city, especially in the more affluent locations in and around the Western Suburbs, where living on a tree-lined street is something of a status symbol.   

Here is a link to some photographs of various species of exotic street trees in Perth Western Australia. Link 

More information about street trees in Western Australia can be found here. Link 

An ancient Chinese proverb states: "The best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago. The second best time is now."

Two of the issues relating to planting exotic street trees in Western Australia are our long-hot summers and our generally poor-quality soils. These issues can however be addressed using a planting system or technique known as Sandponics. In a sandponics planting system, a planting hole of a suitable diameter and depth is dug. An impervious, natural liner is then placed into the planting hole with a small drainage hole positioned a short distance from the bottom of the planting hole. This hole allows for drainage to prevent the planting media from becoming waterlogged during heavy downpours. Next, a suitably sized water reservoir is placed on one side of the hole, with a specially designed filler cap protruding above the top of the hole. This reservoir also has a specially designed very slow-leaking drain located at its base.  A specially formulated compost is then placed at the bottom of the hole and the sapling is planted on top of the compost. The hole is then filled with specially formulated media to the top of the planting hole.

The water reservoir is then filled with water, plus the media should also be watered, following which the planting is complete.

The ideal time to plant saplings is during the winter, as this gives the sapling time to start putting down roots while the ground remains moist.

During summer. the saplings should be watered regularly by refilling the reservoir as needed. As the summer progresses, the rate of watering will increase. This is due to the sapling transpiring more water, and absorbing more moisture from the planting media. Landscape fabric laid on top of the media and covered with a layer of stones will help reduce evaporation from the surface of the media.

As the sapling matures, the reservoir can be removed by loosening the media and lifting the container out of the ground using the filler spout to pull the container up and out of the ground. The natural fabric liner will eventually compost away until no trace of it remains,