For The Love of Trees: Arbor Day in the Yarra Ranges

Image: Maypole Dance Kilsyth Arbor Day 1911, photograph, Collection of Yarra Ranges Regional Museum P7258

For The Love of Trees: Arbor Day in the Yarra Ranges
Sat 17 Aug 2024 – Sun 9 Feb 2025
Yarra Ranges Regional Museum

FREE entry

About the Exhibition

Each year thousands of Australian schoolchildren and community groups come together in July for National Schools Tree Day and National Tree Day, celebrating the importance of trees and rehabilitating our natural environment. But did you know that community tree planting began with Arbor Day in the late 1880s?

Arbor Day began in the U.S. and spread to Australia in 1889, when the South Australian education department organised tree planting by school children to re-green the community after decades of land clearing and to encourage younger citizens to get their hands dirty. It was quickly adopted by other states and Victoria hosted its first Arbor Day in the early 1890s. 

In Lilydale Arbor Day was inaugurated in 1897 before spreading throughout the Yarra Ranges region to Montrose, Kilysth and Mooroolbark. For The Love of Trees: Arbor Day in the Yarra Ranges features photographs that depict the festivities and fever that propelled the success of Arbor Day across this region and the importance of these trees to our history, heritage, and community.  

 

About Yarra Ranges Regional Museum

Opened in 2011, Yarra Ranges Regional Museum promotes a greater understanding of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the Yarra Ranges region through exhibitions, collections and programs. The Museum is custodian of a collection of over 13,000 cultural objects, including Indigenous belongings related to Coranderrk Aboriginal Station and a sub-collection related to opera diva Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931).