What is Adopt a Tree and how we began
Adopt a Tree was founded by a group of employees who were working at a busy golf course in Melbourne. Part of our job was planting trees, and we were passionate about it. We felt lucky to see the trees that we had planted with our own hands mature and grow, especially as they became habitat for birds and wildlife, and a group of us decided to make it our full-time profession. We formed a company, and now we plant native trees for a living. We work with golf courses, local authorities, and landowners to secure permission to plant new native trees, with a focus on identifying public spaces in urban areas that have been deforested or previously cleared of bushland. Our mission is to create urban bushland areas at a variety of these sites. We hope that you will join us on our mission to plant new trees by personally adopting a tree or purchasing an adoption as a gift. We hope that you will experience the same feeling that we all did when we turned bare earth that had been cleared of bushland decades ago back into groves of flowering native trees. We hope that you want to help capture and store the excess CO2 in our atmosphere, and that you want to be part of creating new tree-filled spaces in our urban areas. We hope that one day you will visit your adopted tree, to touch it and smell it, to see the wildlife it supports. We hope that adopting a tree will give you a taste of what we experience every day.
How Adopt a Tree began
It all began when the team that maintains the golf course playing surfaces began to plant new trees as part of golf course improvement works. We planted species of Eucalyptus, as well as Oaks, Elms, Magnolia and Pine. We selected the trees from the nursery, we researched how to plant and care for the different species, and with help and advice from an arborist, we began planting and caring for the new trees. This was in 2019 and in that first year our team planted just a few dozen trees at locations approved by the golf course owners. The golfers, both members and public players, began to notice the new trees we had been planting. To our surprise and delight, the golfers liked the fact that we were planting new trees. As long as there was still enough space to play golf, golfers were overwhelmingly supportive.
It was quite expensive to plant and care for the new trees, and while the golf course was very supportive, we had a limited budget. A garden club was formed, and 14 volunteers, all keen golfers and gardeners, began to help us source and plant the new trees. With the help of these volunteers, we had planted over 300 new trees by 2021. We also planted and cared for native shrubs, grasses and garden beds in areas adjacent to the golf course that had eroded away over the years to bare ground. The paid employees worked extra hours on their own time and worked alongside the volunteers. These new trees and other plants beautified the golf course and surrounding area, and it gave us all a great sense of pleasure and achievement.
By 2022, the trees that we had planted back in 2019 had really started growing up – some of them already over 5 meters high. It was incredible to see something that we had planted with our own hands as a tiny seedling grow into a real tree, flowering, scented, supporting insect and animal life, capturing and storing CO2, and becoming a permanent part of the golf course landscape. We marveled at the healthy new trees and were proud of our achievement in planting and caring for them. It became apparent to us then that although we did love caring for the whole golf course, the planting of new native trees had become our passion. It was actually rather addictive and we wanted to plant more. Lots more.
We began to look for other golf courses or other publicly accessible areas that we could plant new trees on. We quickly discovered that there was huge support for tree planting right across the community, but that the cost and time involved in planting and caring for trees meant that only a fraction of the potential trees that could be planted were being planted, despite plenty of land being available. Based on our experience back at the golf course, where garden club volunteers had given up their own time, as well as purchasing, planting, and caring for new trees alongside paid employees, we thought there may be a solution. Maybe there were people out there who wanted to help us on our mission to plant new trees at these locations. We had the skills and the passion, now all we needed was a budget.
A group of golf course workers, including a horticulturalist and an arborist, as well as some of the original garden club volunteers decided on a big career change. We made tree-planting our new mission. We formed a company for this purpose and launched the Adopt a Tree website. We knew that there were many people out there who wanted to plant a new tree, or give a new tree as a gift. Like us, they wanted to be personally responsible for the creation and care of a new tree. They wanted to know that their tree was supporting native wildlife, stopping soil erosion, repairing deforested urban areas and absorbing and storing literally metric tons of CO2. People also wanted to visit their own tree – to be able to see it, touch it and smell it, just like we had done. There is something fantastic about transforming a bare patch of ground back into a healthy, thriving ecosystem with its own micro-climate, whether it is a small grove of a few dozen native trees, or many hectares of re-planted urban bushland.
We have now secured permission to plant new native trees and create urban bushland at various new sites, many of them close to the inner-city. We hope that you will join us on our mission to plant trees by personally adopting a tree or purchasing an adoption as a gift. We hope that you will experience the same feeling that we did when we turned bare earth into groves of flowering native trees. We hope that you want to help capture and store the excess CO2 in our atmosphere, and that you want to be part of creating new tree-filled spaces in our urban areas. We hope that one day you will visit your adopted tree, to touch it and smell it, to see the wildlife it supports. We hope that adopting a tree will give you a taste of what we experience every day.