Farmers meet to plan successful shelterbelts

NRM NEWS - MARCH 2020

By Sandy Dellwo
Murray Regional Agriculture Landcare Facilitator

Farmers in the Wanganella area held a workshop recently to discuss the importance of shelterbelts for agricultural production and biodiversity. The group of four landholders will be establishing shelterbelts on their properties and caught up to find out how to plan for successful shelterbelts.

Sue Logie from the Murray LLS Seed Services team gave a presentation at the workshop. Sue spoke about the benefits of local native plants, ways of revegetating (direct seeding and tubestock), how shelterbelts work, their benefits, considerations in planting them and shelterbelt design.

Key messages from the workshop:

• Use local native species.
• Consider making shelterbelt as wide as possible.
• Link shelterbelts to existing vegetation (including remnants) where possible.
• Ensure good diversity of plant species including a mix of overstorey and understorey.
• Consider direct seeding.
• Maintain sites for pests and weeds long term.

This workshop is part of a project supported by four Wanganella landholders, through funding from the Australian Government's National Landcare Program.