The greening of our world is something close to the hearts of our students here at Unley PS. A few weeks ago, Year 6 students, Wren, Yuxin, Niamh, Oliver, Sasindu and William participated in an environmental forum with Unley Council representatives, and students from neighbouring schools, to explore ways we can make a difference to our tree canopy.

The City of Unley has a target to increase canopy cover by 20% by 2045 to help keep Unley leafy for generations to come. This is a big challenge as currently we are losing trees across the city every year.

Our students were full of creative ideas and worked productively with the Unley Council staff in generating interesting plans.

The aims of the student forum were

  •  to get student input regarding Council’s Tree Strategy.  
  •  to get the views and ideas from some of our younger residents in how to best achieve this big challenge!
  • to find out what students like about trees? What don’t they like? What are trees worth?
  • to get views on how we fit more trees into our city?
  • to gather views on how protect the trees we already have?
  • to gather ideas on how we adapt our city trees to a changing climate?

Congratulations to the students involved and thanks to Unley Council for inviting students to contribute to this important forum. Our students are the future and they will be the important guardians of our community and its environment for years to come.