Celebrate Arbor Day

Brisbane City schools will celebrate the 134th Arbor Day on Tuesday 8 October 2024. Council offers free native plants to all primary, secondary and special schools in Brisbane City for planting on their grounds to celebrate Arbor Day.

Celebrated throughout the world, Arbor Day is traditionally a day for planting trees for shade and educating students about the importance of trees.

Arbor Day plants

Schools are eligible to claim up to 50 free native plants from Council for Arbor Day.

There is variety of different species on offer, including trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and tufting plants, so schools will be able choose plants suitable for greening their school grounds.

See what plants are on offer this Arbor Day.

Apply for plants

Schools can apply for native plants through the online form from Friday 16 August 2024.

To ensure your school receives plants in time for Arbor Day, Council encourages schools to apply for their plant allocation no later than Friday 13 September 2024.

Apply online for your free Arbor Day native plants

The Arbor Day online application form will only be available until Thursday 31 October 2024 as Council is unable to hold over plant orders past this date.

Planting your Arbor Day plants

The value of Brisbane’s urban trees

Urban trees contribute to the health of our environment and our communities in a variety of ways, by:

  • cooling our city by shading our homes, school buildings and playgrounds and local streets
  • producing oxygen and storing carbon,
  • filtering pollution and cleaning our air
  • providing a food source and homes for native wildlife
  • saving water by providing shade and slowing water evaporation
  • helping prevent soil erosion on hillsides and creek banks by slowing run-off and holding soil in place
  • preserving Brisbane’s subtropical feel and increasing the aesthetic beauty of local neighbourhoods
  • improving human physical and mental health by promoting both active and passive recreation.

Email Green Heart Schools for more information on the value of urban trees.

Fun reading for Arbor Day

Find books suitable for student reading for Arbor Day.

Picture books

  • Only a Tree Knows How to Be a Tree by Mary Murphy
  • Adoette by Lydia Monks
  • Silky’s Story by Jeanne Willis
  • The Toast Tree by Corina Martin
  • The Anzac Tree Christina Booth
  • Beneath the Trees by Cristy Burne

Primary school readers

  • The Tiny Seed  by Eric Cale
  • Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeanie Baker
  • The Last Tree by Mark Wilson
  • The Lorax by Dr Seuss
  • The World That We Want by Kim Toft
  • Uno's Garden by Graeme Base
  • I can name 50 trees today by Bonnie Worth
  • Plantastic! A to Z of Australian Plants by Catherine Clowes
  • The Letterbox Tree by Rebecca Lim and Kate Gordon
  • Little Fur by Isobelle Carmody
  • Surviving in the Wild (Series) by Remy Lai

Secondary school readers

  • The Rabbits by John Marsden
  • Dry by Neal Shusterman
  • Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors by Adrienne Maree Brown
  • Green Rising by Lauren James
  • Banjo Tully­ by Justin D’Arth
  • The Summer We Turned Green by William Sutcliffe
  • Tyenna by Julie Hunt

General reading

  • In Their Branches: Stories from ABC RN’s Trees Project by Gretchen Miller
  • If Trees Could Speak by Bob Beale
  • Trees That Call Australia Home by John Halkett
  • Monarchs of the Woods by Peter Holzworth
  • Darwin’s Tree of Life by Michael Bright, illustrated by Margaux Carpenter
  • The Arbonaut by Margaret Lowman
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Brisbane City Council acknowledges this Country and its Traditional Custodians. We pay our respects to the Elders, those who have passed into the Dreaming; those here today; those of tomorrow.