These grandiose type of gestures always worry me. Made by fools who live in cities, they generally lead to bureaucrats in Canberra, Brisbane, or the local council dictating to land owners what they are "allowed" to do with their own properties. Local bureaucrats tried to introduce some scheme they had hatched a few years back, but a dozen public meetings with numbers overflowing the largest halls in the shire convinced the councilors it was a bad idea.

I like trees. I bought a bare, over grazed ex turf farm 30 years ago. It had 6 trees total. I planted 140 trees & similar number of shrubs around the 1.5 acre house paddock, & 250 down the paddock. Nature mostly birds planted a few hundred more. More than half have survived. I struggled keeping some, like the 100 Chinese Empress, [Paulownia tomentosa] alive through years of drought, only to have them all die of root rot the first wet year, obviously unsuitable for here. I planted a few Silky Oaks, [Grevillea robusta], & as soon as they produced seed, the birds planted them everywhere. They love the place.

A weed is any plant in the wrong place. Some had to go, because I had planted the wrong tree in that place, others because the birds had done the same. However we now have a couple of acres of Silky Oaks, to produce cabinet timber, & may plant another 10 or so. Also a few acres of Lemon myrtle for oil & lemon tea production, plus some in bags for the nursery trade. Both these are indigenous to the area.

Still I have removed a few hundred that were in the wrong place, generating nice clumps of shelter & shade, but I have had to remove hundreds in 30 years, including many declared noxious weeds. My worry is that I will have some bureaucrat telling me I can't choose to remove any trees at all, & even I can't harvest trees I have planted for that purpose. It has happened before, when bureaucrats are empowered.

Interesting projects Hasbeen. Kudos.

Hasbeen,
Couldn’t agree more; I can imagine our council, which is decidedly Green, telling us that we can’t harvest our Ash coppice for firewood.

In the 1990+ I was involved in the development of a Rehabilitation farm on the coast where we cleared felled 60 Hectares to reforestrate with Blackbutt and two species of Gum for milling timber. We took almost a hudred trucks of Box and Turpentine out in the clearing, But while the area was fallow we had greeinies on mptor bikes riding into the farm and tracks entering without permission. We had koalas on the farm and they had to move out of the area, which we wanted them to do to move into National Forest. Because this is private land with a rich growth of Hardwoods storing carbon a future at 2030 might mean we could not mill these trees, though poles were taken out in 2014. Where the area is clear felled and returned to grazing.

I find the way some trees coppice & some don't very interesting Is Mise.

I had one very large red gum tree on the place. It was huge, over 10Ft at the base, & a very dangerous tree. It would drop huge branches, 2 to 3Ft diameter on occasions, up to 20% of the tree. As it was a favorite camping place of my horses I knew it should go before it killed one, but found it hard to do it.

Finally I called in the experts who said it was unhealthy, & had it dropped. We got 4 slabs over a meter wide from the upper trunk, the lower was rotten with an ants nest 3 meters high & 1.5 round up the center.

It is its coppicing that fascinates me. It will throw up 4 to 6 each year. With the huge root structure of the old tree these will grow to 500mm & 7M high in a couple of years. I don't use fire wood, but every second year a neighbor cuts most of them, & gets a seasons supply of fire wood.

Another interesting tree is the strangler fig. We have one down by the river bank. It currently shades about an acre, & is impressive to say the least. We had a bird planted one germinated about 2.5M up in a Poinciana in the house paddock. I left it for a couple of years, so the kids could watch it grow. We watched another on the river bank that took 12 years to engulf the red gum sapling that was it's host.

I have a couple of gums on the road verge I have been mowing around for 30 years. They were 1M high saplings & 30 years later are only 120mm round today. A Silky oak popped up beside one last year. It will rapidly overtake the gum. Do I defend the gum & take out the Silky oak, or let nature take it's course. Oh the stress of these critical decisions.

Hasbeen,

Some gums coppice well.
Bord Na Mona, the Irish electricity suppliers plant Australian gums on the cutover bogland that can no longer be cut for turf as it is now to close to the water table.
The gums are harvested for fuel for the power stations…sustainable energy that the Greenies do not like.