Applications are currently closed.
Are your school grounds looking a little bare? Could your students use some shady spots to sit? Apply for a Federation Tree Levy grant and your school community could receive $600 worth of native trees!
For years, Federation’s Tree Levy has provided schools with native trees, giving students, teachers and communities access to much-needed shade and cool, providing valuable native habitat for birds and wildlife, and helping create a greener and leafier school environment.
Kara Osborne is Federation Representative at Cardiff High School in the Hunter Valley. In 2021, she applied for a Tree Levy grant to create a garden of native edible plants on the school grounds. The application was successful, the trees were planted and students now regularly harvest the garden for ingredients.
“We’re on Awabakal land and I wanted to find some plants that were native to our region,” Kara said. “We worked with our school’s Indigenous support person and a local supplier to find bush tucker plants.”
Kara’s year 8 class ended up planting finger limes, lilly pillies, lemon myrtle, wattle, native dates and Illawarra plums, plowing the land themselves and staging an opening ceremony to mark the garden’s completion.
“My students wrote a little journal about the garden’s journey and presented it back to the school, including a digital recipe book using ingredients off the plants,” Kara says.
With the plants well-established four years on, students now use the garden to make lilly pilly jam and cordial, wattleseed and lemon myrtle cheesecake.
“It was such a great opportunity for the kids,” Kara said. “We made a whole unit out of it.”
With summers getting longer and hotter, increasing tree coverage is one of the most effective ways to keep students and teachers cool outdoors. Creating or increasing tree canopy cover can greatly lower outdoor temperatures, including on playgrounds and free play areas, helping students and teachers keep cool and lowering the risk of sunburn, heat stroke and dehydration.
Federation funds the Tree Levy to offset the environmental impact of Federation’s paper usage.
For more information on how your school can apply, log onto the Member Portal.