Trees for Life's tens of millions of plantings since 1981 reverse the rampant land clearing across South Australia

Trees for Life planted its first tree at One Tree Hill, north of Adelaide, in 1982.

Tens of millions of trees have been grown across South Australia by Trees for Life volunteers since 1981. The organisation also has protected 4,000 hectares of bushland on more than 300 sites, had 408 species of native plants stored in its seed bank, conducted 100 monthly education programmes and workshops, and attracted 2,000 active volunteers and 7,000 supporters.

Trees For Life began in 1981, when Lolo Houbein and Burr Dodd gathered some friends to coordinate a visit to South Australia by Richard St. Barbe Baker, founder of the international environmental organisation Men of the Trees. After a full hall of people gathered to hear Baker’s message, the South Australian branch of Men of the Trees was formed within a fortnight. The group changed its name to Trees For Life two years later.

The impetus for Trees For Life was the obvious consequence of extensive clearing of the South Australian bush. Soil in South Australia was being blown or washed away with very little vegetation left to hold it. Trees For Life’s simple response was for volunteers to grow native plants for farmers willing to plant them.

The group’s first tree was planted on One Tree Hill, north of Adelaide, in 1982. Millions of trees, shrubs and grasses followed, forming wind breaks, providing erosion control, creating new forests and buffers for the few remaining stands of original vegetation. revegetate and protect bushland, farm land and urban terrain. Its work extended into bushcare to protect and conserve valuable remnant vegetation and broadacre revegetation, to help restore habitat and to act as long-term carbon sinks.

Among the Trees for Life programmes were:
• Bush For Life and Bush Action Teams, where volunteers received training to manage and protect remnant vegetation..
• A direct seeding programme offering broad-scale revegetation using a wide range of local native species.
• The Tree Scheme for volunteer growers to raise native seedlings to distributed to landholders, farmers and Trees For Life revegetation projects.
• Training in propagating plants, bush management, seed collecting and identifying plants.
• Creating carbon neutral offsets for carbon dioxide emissions by planting native trees.