The old cliché “when it rains, it pours” perfectly describes the recent opportunities we've had to share YAN’s Climate Ready Revegetation work.

 

Soon after Gill and Sarah’s popular presentation at the National Landcare Conference at the Gold Coast, YAN’s Climate Ready Revegetation work was presented at the Native Seed Diversity & Revegetation Workshop organised by Holbrook Landcare Network, at the AdaptNSW Forum in Sydney (see trip report below), and at a South East Landcare gathering near Nowra.

 

It has been great to share our approach to future-proofing our local landscapes, and equally valuable to learn what other work is being done to prepare, adapt, and build climate resilience.

 

 

Left/top: Climate Resilience Garden at Wirraminna Environmental Education Centre. Located in the Holbrook region, the Centre is well worth visiting!

Right/bottom: A visit to one of Murray Local Land Services' seed production areas in the Holbrook region was very eye opening!

 

AdaptNSW Forum

YAN's Climate Ready Revegetation team was pleased to be invited to present at the 2025 AdaptNSW Forum, held on November 25-26 at the Roundhouse in Sydney.

 

Gill Hall and Sonya Duus attended the forum and presented YAN's work as part of the session titled: ‘Resilient by Design: Adapting nature repair to a changing climate’.

 

In their presentation, ‘Volunteer-driven Climate Ready Revegetation in the Yass Area’, they gave an overview of YAN’s efforts. They focused on the program's foundation in the latest available science regarding climate change projections and genetic diversity, and highlighted the crucial role of volunteers in propagating and distributing climate-ready plants in the Yass area.

 

The presentation was well-received by a large and engaged audience, generating strong interest in our grassroots community efforts towards building ecological resilience.

 

 

Left/top: Gill Hall talking about the motivation behind YAN's Climate Ready Revegetation Program at the AdaptNSW Forum. Photo credit: Elin Bandmann

Right/bottom: Sonya Duus speaking at the AdaptNSW Forum. Photo credit: Lauren Rickards

 

The panel also included Maurizio Rossetto (Research Centre for Ecosystem Resilience, Botanic Gardens of Sydney), David Rissik (Risk and Resilience Specialist, BMT), and Renee Burrow (Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy). The session was chaired by Michelle Dawson from the Cultural and Ecosystem Climate Change Adaptation Team at the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

 

The session also involved a practical component where attendees were given the chance to explore the newly launched, updated version of the Restore & Renew webtool.

 

  

Left/top: Session participants exploring the updated Restore & Renew webtool

Right/bottom: The updated Restore & Renew webtool being launched at the AdaptNSW Forum 2025

 

The two-day forum's theme was "Other Ways of Knowing, Thinking, Feeling and Doing". It was great to see significant Aboriginal content and a mix of refreshingly mind-stretching concepts and methods alongside more conventional topics. The event provided a valuable opportunity to share information and connect with others working on diverse aspects of climate change adaptation.

 

YAN’s participation at this event was made possible thanks to funding from the NSW Department Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

 

Written by Sonya Duus, Climate Ready Revegetation Project Officer

 

The Climate Ready Revegetation Project has been assisted by the NSW Government through its Environmental Trust. Landcare Australia Michael King grants enable us to purchase seed from diverse provenances.

Once a year, we systematically take stock of what we've accomplished in our Climate Ready Revegetation program. This annual reporting to our funders is more than just a requirement; it's a great opportunity to reflect on our successes, identify areas for refinement, and truly appreciate the enormous collective effort contributed by our dedicated volunteers as they prepare the landscape for the future.

 

Because we are dealing with plants, it’s not surprising that there is a seasonal flow to our work. Beginnings and ends are a bit arbitrary in natural systems, but let’s start in spring 2024 (which is when our reporting year starts).

 

In early spring 2024, a group of volunteers got together to sort and pot up the seed for YAN’s Climate Ready nurseries. It took several hours of focused attention, handling around 260 seed collections across our 40 climate ready nursery species. By mixing seed from multiple different provenances for each species, we are intentionally increasing the genetic diversity in our tubestock and in local revegetation plantings.  This is a core strategy to improve their capacity to adapt to changing environmental conditions over time. We are incredibly grateful for the annual Michael King grants that allow us to purchase this seed.

 

During spring 2024, volunteers at our three Landcare nurseries, along with the nursery team at the Alexander Machonochie Centre, sowed seed for all 40 Climate Ready species.

 

 

Over spring and summer, nursery volunteers then followed up with all the essential care (watering, weeding, thinning, etc) that germinating seeds and young plants require. Altogether, across a 12-month period, around 75 volunteers contributed a total of more than 2,300 hours on these crucial nursery activities, ultimately resulting in close to 17,000 tubestock that were ready for planting.

 

In autumn 2025, most of the tubestock were ready to plant out. Nursery volunteers then managed the final stage, arranging the orders that landholders had placed earlier in the year and distributing the tubestock for planting.

 

Over autumn and early winter, some 90 landholders with their friends and family planted out the tubestock as part of large and small revegetation efforts, tree lanes, and filling-in previous plantings. We encourage all landholders to monitor their plantings and provide feedback so they can track the progress on their properties and help us to improve our practices. Meanwhile, a dedicated volunteer was conducting germination tests on newly-purchased seed collections for the following season.

 

 

 

During the winter months, our volunteers continued to care for the smaller number of species that are propagated in autumn, distributing any left-over plants, and preparing the nurseries for the next year’s cycle.

 

Also part of the annual cycle, volunteer trial hosts monitor their plantings and report on the survival of our three-species trial plantings that is checking the survival of plants grown from ‘local’ and ‘non-local’ seed. Results so far show survival is comparable between the two treatments.

 

Behind the Scenes

Seeds and plants are the physical, tangible, elements of our climate-ready work, but there is alsoa significant amount of strategy and coordination happening behind the scenes.

 

The Climate Ready Revegetation (CRR) team, which includes five long-serving volunteers as well as the CRR Project Officer and YAN Coordinator, helps to guide all aspects of the program. We had in-depth meetings roughly every three months to discuss the operation and strategic direction of the program, as well as having regular email and phone communication.

 

 

A lot of work goes into assessing species to check whether they are likely to be suitable for our future climate. In the last year, three local ecological experts also volunteered their time to advise on the ecologically important species we should consider for our nurseries.

 

There are also lots of other activities related to the coordination and administration of the program. This includes managing the seed pipeline (sourcing seed from numerous different provenances from multiple seed retailers, checking the spread of provenances are adequate, undertaking seed stocktakes, and keeping detailed records of our seed collections); program governance (reviewing our species list and documenting processes); outreach (encouraging landholders to monitor their plantings and communicating with our Landcare members, partners, and broader network); and the essential tasks of applying for funding and reporting to project funders.

 

Highlights and Future Focus

A major highlight from the past year has been our partnership with the Botanic Gardens of Sydney’s genetic team, which informs our multi-provenance seed sourcing strategy. We eagerly await the results of Eucalyptus melliodora genetic sequencing (of our seed, seedlings and plantings) to understand the genetic diversity achieved so far for this species and how to further improve it.

 

It has been very rewarding to launch an initiative where committed volunteers are trialling different methods at home to help us 'crack the germination code' on species difficult to propagate in our nurseries.

 

We have also begun seriously investigating strategies to upscale our impact, specifically by exploring climate-ready direct seeding options, networking with other groups, and actively sharing our methods and experience – including at the National Landcare Conference. To help communicate the benefits of our approach, we also engaged a filmmaker during the last year.

 

It’s been a massive, productive year for the program, showcasing the dedication of our entire Landcare community. If you would like to get involved with any aspect of our work, please get in touch. 🌱

 

 

By Sonya Duus, Climate Ready Revegetation Project Officer

 

The Climate Ready Revegetation Project has been assisted by the NSW Government through its Environmental Trust. Landcare Australia Michael King grants enable us to purchase seed from diverse provenances.

The Yass Area Network of Landcare Groups (YAN) was proud to be represented at this year’s National Landcare Conference, where Gill Hall and Sarah McGrath presented an engaging session on “Future-Proofing Landscapes: Climate Ready Revegetation in Action” as part of the Nature Repair & Climate Adaptation stream.

 

   

 

With over 650 participants attending the conference, the room was full for their session. It was great to see the enthusiasm for the topic. The presentation sparked plenty of interest and conversation, even catching the attention of conference MC Costa Georgiadis, who shared some of the session’s key messages with the main plenary audience, highlighting the impact and community-driven effort behind Climate Ready Revegetation.

 

   

 

Gill opened the session by taking attendees through the history and evolution of the Climate Ready Revegetation (CRR) program, explaining how it connects local action with climate science. The presentation outlined the key steps involved, from understanding our future climate analogues, to selecting species, using new online planning tools, and managing seed provenance sourcing and nursery distribution.

 

   

 

At its heart, Climate Ready Revegetation aims to introduce genetic diversity into revegetation projects, helping to ensure that the plants we put in the ground today will remain resilient across generations of changing conditions.

 

   

 

Sarah then shared YAN’s on-the-ground learnings from the program and offered insights for other Landcare groups looking to apply climate-ready principles to their own regions. She emphasised that making revegetation resilient means thinking long-term, about the future climate, species diversity, and the community effort needed to sustain it.

 

“Significant resources go into revegetation,” Sarah noted. “By combining science with community passion, we can boost genetic diversity and build true resilience into our landscapes.”

 

Guided by climate projections and supported by dedicated volunteers, the Yass Valley’s CRR program grows and plants thousands of climate-ready tubestock each year, embedding this innovative approach into core Landcare activities.

 

   

 

The high level of interest from across Australia was wonderful to see, and a reminder that community-led science and collaboration are at the heart of climate adaptation.

 

We extend our sincere thanks to AdaptNSW for the funding that facilitated Gill's attendance and presentation development for the National Landcare conference.

 

>> See the presentation here
>> Learn more about Climate Ready Revegetation

 

 

 

Recently, a group of dedicated volunteers came together for one of the most important and often overlooked steps in our Climate Ready Revegetation (CRR) program: seed sorting. The seeds prepared on the day are now being sown in our community Landcare nurseries in Yass, Murrumbateman, and Bowning/Bookham, as well as at the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC), where they will be grown into seedlings and returned for planting in autumn.

 

This activity sits at the very heart of our mission to grow climate-ready plants. Seeds for each species are carefully sourced from multiple provenances to maximise genetic diversity. With genetic diversity, we are equipping future generations of plants with the capacity to adapt to a changing climate, ensuring the long-term success of local revegetation projects.

 

   

 

On the day, a cheerful team of volunteers combined seeds from an average of 7 sources for each of the 40 local native species on our Climate Ready nursery list. Thousands upon thousands of seeds were checked, sorted, and measured into tiny pots, each pot containing the beginnings of a future tree, shrub, or grass that will help restore and protect our landscapes. Labels were carefully triple-checked, records updated, and everything prepared with precision so that our nurseries can sow with confidence.

 

         

 

Seed sorting is just one stage in the CRR process, which begins with species selection by the CRR team, followed by seed collection from geographically diverse suppliers. Each seed lot is tested by volunteers for germination to ensure viability before mixing. Together, these steps ensure the plants we raise are strong, healthy, and genetically diverse, giving our revegetation projects the best possible chance to thrive and adapt for decades to come.

 

      

 

A huge thank you goes out to all the volunteers who contributed their time, care, and attention to detail at the seed sorting day. These efforts are essential to the success of the program and will continue through the growing and planting stages in the months ahead.

 

   

 

If you’d like to get involved, each of our nurseries runs volunteer sowing days and seasonal activities, and next year, you can help plant these climate-ready seedlings into the ground. Together, we’re growing a resilient future for our landscapes.

 

Find out more about the Climate Ready Revegetation

 

Written by Sarah McGrath, YAN Local Coordinator

 

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The Climate Ready Revegetation Project has been assisted by the NSW Government through its Environmental Trust. Landcare Australia Michael King grants enable us to purchase seed from diverse provenances.