It’s no secret that planting trees helps the environment. One tree absorbs more than a ton of carbon in its lifetime, so when you plant a lot of trees, just imagine the impact!

Trees For Life is a South Australian organisation which supports volunteers who want to make a real difference. This year they’re celebrating 30 years of revegetating our state and in that time they’ve grown 30 million trees from seedlings; that’s 15,000 AAMI stadiums!

Jenny Howe coordinates the Volunteer Grower Program from the Trees for Life nursery near the airport. She works with growers to propagate a million seedlings a year for planting.

Michael: Obviously you get a bit busy around here this time of year?

Jenny: Yes it does get busy around here; we have two main days, boxing up day and distribution day. Boxing up day is when we have fifty volunteer run depots around the state and they’ll get a group of people together to prepare kits so our volunteers can start growing. And then on distribution day we have people come to their nearest depot collect their kits “Ready For Growing” and what they’re collecting is a box of soil that’s got everything they need. They don’t need to go out and buy anything we provide everything for them and all the instructions that they need.

Michael: What’s actually in a kit?

Jenny: You’ll receive a polystyrene box full of soil and you’re actually going to grow in that box. You want to tip that out into a wheelbarrow and we give you one packet of fertiliser for each box of soil so you mix that up. Then you get out your tubes and you pack each tube full of soil nice and firm for growing. Then it's just a case of getting the seeds out, sprinkle them out and put a bit of gravel on top as this reduces evaporation. Put it in a nice sunny spot and water it every day for about six months and after four to six weeks you'll see those seeds germinating and its fascinating to watch.

Michael: Hey Jenny, do the growers know who they’re growing the trees for?

Jenny: Yes they do. They receive their contact details so they can ring each other up and find out how the plants are going. In some cases they might go out to the farm where the plants are and help them plant them. Some growers have grown for landholders for up to twenty years and they’ve continually watched the plants put in the ground and go back and see last years plants and how they’ve grown.

Michael: Most volunteers take around six boxes or so. Once grown and distributed, their seedlings are often planted out with the help of more volunteers!

Jenny: It’s a fantastic opportunity to help make this dry state green. It also is an opportunity to involve my family. My children water the seedlings, we hand them back to Trees For Life and we also assist in planting them as well.

Michael: It’s amazing to think that groups of people like this donate six million dollars worth of their time to help out every year; just look at the difference a revegetation program can make!

So if you’ve got some spare time, why not contact Trees For Life and see what you can do to help and at the moment because they really need volunteers to grow seedlings over summer. You don’t need a green thumb, just a sunny spot in your yard and time to give them a regular watering. Call or register your interest on their website and you could be collecting your growing supplies in November. Get the whole family involved! It’s great for South Australia, costs nothing and you’ll join thousands of others assisting mother nature to do what she does best.