One Tree Per Child / National Tree Day

One Tree Per Child

Planting a tree is often a child’s first act of volunteering for the benefit of our entire community. Let’s leave the municipality in better condition than what we inherited. Let’s plant a tree for every child and enjoy watching the trees grow as our children grow!

Learn more about the global One Tree Per Child program

One Tree Per Child is a global initiative founded by Olivia Newton-John and Jon Dee, who also founded the highly successful National Tree Day Program. In 2017, Greater Shepparton City Council committed to the One Tree Per Child Program and great outcomes have been celebrated from the project each year.

While the initiative is called One Tree Per Child, the species planted across Greater Shepparton include a diverse mix of indigenous trees, shrubs, grasses and groundcovers that have largely been cleared from our local landscape.

Each year the Greater Shepparton City Council facilitates a native plant to be planted for each child (person aged under 18 years). A variety of different species of trees, shrubs, groundcovers and grasses are planted to help restore a diverse range of flora species to provide habitat for woodland birds and other native fauna species.

In 2022 Council celebrated planting a total of 100,000 plants in the municipality, and in 2025 the 200,000 plant milestone was achieved.

These achievements were only possible through partnerships with many schools, kindergartens, childcare centres, Landcare and community groups.

Help Greater Shepparton grow into a greener, happier community

National Tree Day

Since 2007, Council has hosted a National Tree Day event.
National Tree Day was founded in 1996 and has since grown into Australia's largest community tree planting and nature protection event.

National Tree Day is a call to action for all Australians to put their hands in the earth and give back to their community. Since its launch in 1996, there have been 26 million trees planted across Australia, with five million volunteers donating a total of 10 million hours.

Learn more about National Tree Day