Street Tree Strategy for Monash

To view street tree renewal plans, please go to Street Tree Selection.

Council’s horticultural team will be overseeing the delivery of the strategy using the key stages listed below:

1. Tree Assessment – qualified arborist undertake a individual assessments on each tree and vacant sites of the nominated sites.
   
   
2. Proposed Street Renewal Plan – based on the assessments, officers draft a plan for residents to review and provide feedback.
   
   
3. Community consultation – comprising mail outs, online information, street meetings and individual enquiry responses.
   
   
4. Street Tree Species Selection – based on renewal plan and community feedback, Council provide a final choice of options for all directly affected residents to vote on.
   
   
5. Final Street Renewal Plan – based on the result of the species vote, Council’s project team will finalise the plan and provide to residents.
   
   
6. Tree Removal and Establishment – the final plan is implemented including the procurement of chosen tree species, tree removals, planting and maintenance for two years.

Year 1: Street Tree Strategy Implementation

In June 2016, Council adopted a 30 year strategy to improve and protect Monash’s valued street tree canopy.

With the strategy, Council is aiming to achieve high quality, consistently-planted and attractive avenues. While Monash's existing tree canopy is of reasonable health, there are several issues including:

• significant gaps in the existing tree canopy (10%). There are currently 87,600 street trees in Monash with provision to accommodate a further 12,500.
• many of our trees are in decline and will require replacement within the next 30 years
• increasing densification and the associated loss of trees within private properties means that the role of street trees is becoming increasingly important
• Monash has inherited several delisted tree species which represent opportunities for staged replacement

The strategy identifies trees that are in declining health and will need to be replaced over time. It is about delivering a vision for Monash where the trees in any particular street are the best choice for that part of the City (taking into account available growing space, proximity to infrastructure like overhead power lines and footpaths, as well as neighbourhood character).

Improving our implementation and community consultation

About 14 streets were chosen for street tree renewal in the 2016/17 year.

The chosen streets were: Electra Ave (Ashwood); Aloomba St (Chadstone); Currajong St (Oakleigh East); Haig St (Burwood); Kanooka Gve (Clayton); Brentwood Dr, Glen Tower Dr and Mount St/Victoria Ave (Glen Waverley); Briggs St, Essex Rd and Grenfell Rd (Mount Waverley); Samada St (Notting Hill); Moller St (Oakleigh) and Earlwood Dr (Wheelers Hill).

In late 2016, residents in those streets were given the opportunity to nominate their preferred tree species for replacement trees, out of two options put forward by Council.

Residents in and around two streets (Glen Tower Dr and Essex Rd) have raised serious concerns with Council about the scale of the tree removal/replacement that Council had proposed in those areas and about the extent of community consultation that had occurred.

Taking on board this feedback, Council will not proceed with its plan for extensive tree removal/replacement in Glen Tower Dr. After Easter, we will meet with residents from the Essex Rd area to discuss how the community can be involved in making the decision about the future streetscape.

In response to the community feedback, Council has also adopted an extensive evaluation and community consultation process which will be applied before streets are chosen for tree removal/replacement in future. The new process is outlined in - Urgent Business motion - Street Tree Strategy Implementation and Consultation(DOCX, 32KB)