Street Tree Planting

Council's efforts to plant more trees in our City is aligned with the NSW Government's 5 Million Trees for Greater Sydney program, which aims to increase the tree canopy of Greater Sydney by 40 percent. 

Our Street Tree Planting Program focuses on planting entire streets, avenues or roads that have been identified as being high priority due to resident interest and/or significant habitat corridors.

How Council manages its public trees 

In 2012, City of Ryde adopted a Street Tree Master Plan(PDF, 54MB) to strategically plant and manage public trees. Every year, guided by this document, a number of streets in Ryde are selected to have trees planted on the road reserve or naturestrip (streets determined by a priority matrix). 

Selecting the right tree species

When selecting the tree species to be planted on the Council nature strip, Council has highly qualified staff that have studied and worked in the horticultural industry for many years.

Prior to planting trees on Council land there are a number of considerations and checks that are done to ensure the right tree is planted at the right location. These include:

• Inspection of the planting site for services and availability of planting space
• A dial before you dig is undertaken to reduce the instances of conflicts between services and trees.

Council sources tree stocks from reputable suppliers who grow according to acceptable nursery standards and the Australian Standard AS2303:2015 'Tree Stock for Landscape Use'. Stock quality and consistency of plantings are the reasons that we do not encourage residents to plant in Council road reserves.