Australia's National Local Government Newspaper Online

Green Townsville shrugs off ‘Brownsville’ tag

Over the past decade, Townsville has lead Australia in city greening projects winning numerous national awards and generating a new pride among its residents. Townsville enjoys an average of 320 days of sunshine a year. And while that’s terrific news for visitors, it’s not always easy to keep city and residential gardens green.

In 2004, Mayor Tony Mooney made a commitment to inject more than $1 million annually into projects to green the city – and the results have been stunning.

Greening Townsville concentrates on three focus areas:

• community greening events which engage the general public in regular tree planting activities
• a school shade tree program involving young people and students in greening activities, as well as delivering shade to Townsville’s schools
• streetscape projects which focus on improving the amenity of Council’s parks and gardens.

In the past two years, more than 50 community greening events have been held and 2,000 community volunteers have planted more than 25,000 trees, shrubs and groundcovers. More than 15,000 plants also have been distributed to residents at Council greening, neighbourhood fun day and garden show events.

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