🟠 They paved paradise

WHAT’S ON THIS WEEK 🎟️

• EVERY DAY, 10AM to 2.30PM | Dinosroar Experience

• EVERY DAY, 10AM to 5PM | Tesselaar Tulip Festival

• EVERY DAY, 10AM to 5PM | Blossom Festival @ Cherry Hill Orchards, Wandin East

• EVERY WEEKDAY, 23/09/25 to 02/10/25, 11AM to 4PM | SkyHigh’s September Children’s Festival

• 30/09/25 to 02/10/25 | True Fairies

• 28/09/25, 9AM to 1PM | Mooroolbark Community Garden

📰 THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES

🌳 What happens when we cut down trees for car parks? Eastern Melbourne is finding out

Chadstone resident Paul Hepper once loved living near the mature London plane trees along his nature strip, providing canopy protection to the street and nearby houses.

But after the local council ripped the trees out to widen the road for extra parking spaces, cover from the heat can be hard to come by. It’s a pattern being seen across the eastern suburbs.

Hepper told the Eastern Melburnian a lot of redevelopment across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs “takes up the whole block”, leaving “no room for canopy trees”.

“These McMansions are heat pits and an example of going in the wrong direction,” he said.

As the development of the eastern suburbs of Melbourne continues to lead to mature tree removal and mid to high-rise buildings, how should communities incorporate more greenery into our grey developments?

According to Professor Stephen Livesley from the University of Melbourne School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, part of the solution will be thinking of more creative ways to integrate resilient vegetation into design plans.

“If you just put plants in the ground that you've compacted and degraded through the construction process, those trees will not be very healthy and not grow very well,” he told the Eastern Melburnian.

Livesley said creative technologies could include soil vaults, where an underground plastic system can be built into concrete and asphalt infrastructure to house an uncompacted volume of soil and nutrients for urban trees.

“It just costs a little more, but what you will end up with - in 10, 20, 30 years’ time - is a very healthy and vibrant vegetation planting in a very dense area,” he said.

University of Melbourne lecturer in urban greening, Marie Dade, told the Eastern Melburnian there is often a “mismatch” of priorities, with governments and developers building urban green spaces as cheaply as possible at the expense of “not really thinking about what trees are going to be best for supporting urban cooling”.

National advocacy organisation Sweltering Cities executive director, Emma Bacon, said while the recent release of climate-focused documents is a “really important” step, she and her team still hope it would lead to “more solid” regulations.

In terms of specific regulations, a number of the Federal Government’s plans, including the National Adaptation Plan and the Built Environment Sector Plan lay out the framework for expanding on current programs and delivering new rules to state and national building codes.

However, Bacon said “it's hard to say that it meets the moment in terms of the funding that we might like to see” towards these proposed plans.

🏏 “At the eleventh hour”: Cricket club furious over attempted last-minute Box Hill Oval deal

Whitehorse Council has admitted it failed to consult all stakeholders before discussing the future management of Box Hill City Oval, with potential decisions set to controversially reshape access agreements between AFL and cricket clubs using the facilities.

In the council report, staff put forward three options and recommended councillors endorse “Option One”, which would include the Box Hill Hawks Football Club (BHHFC) receiving an annual lease of the new west pavilion and the BHCC only able to access parts of the new facilities five times a year.

Box Hill Cricket Club (BHCC) representatives hit back at the proposed option being dropped at their feet “at the eleventh hour”, leaving them about two days to discuss their stance.

According to BHCC life member, Ken Trollope, the club received notice of the council’s recommended motion on the Thursday before the meeting, held the following Monday.

Trollope said some of the three options “fundamentally change” the club’s usage of the site and it needed a reasonable amount of time to consider its response.

A joint project between Whitehorse Council, federal and state governments, and AFL Victoria, the $28 million invested into the oval would include reconstruction of the sports field and cricket nets, the demolition and reconstruction of the western pavilion and a refurbishment of the southern pavilion.

Works are planned to commence in October and be completed in 2027.

BHCC president Lisa White requested councillors endorse an alternative option, which would allow both the AFL and cricket club to share pavilions via seasonal licences based on their respective seasons.

She said it was “essential for the survival of the club” that they have “equal access” to the new facilities.

Councillor Ben Stennett moved to postpone moving forward until the council meeting on Monday October 13, with eight councillors in support and three opposing.

Whitehorse Council director of community services, Lisa Letic, said the deferral of the decision would have “no material impact on the delivery of the project”.

In an emotionally charged presentation to the chamber, councillor Peter Allan said he was “white-knuckle ropable” that these options had come before council for approval without consulting with all stakeholders.

🧰 A rather large light at the end of the tunnel for The Basin’s abandoned mechanical workshop

An abandoned former mechanical workshop in The Basin may be transformed into a Shell petrol station with takeaway food, a convenience store and two car wash bays.

A planning permit application for 1300 Mountain Highway was submitted to Knox Council on June 6, and interested members of the public can make a comment on the matter until October 7.

A BP petrol station opened on the site in 1965, and in 2001 it became the location for Hillview Motors and Tyres, owned by Ian Hevrich. In 2016 the site was closed. It was sold to National Fuels Pty Ltd in June 2024 for $1,034,000.

Although it is fenced, graffiti has been sprayed on garage doors and a brick wall. It is regularly removed.

The permit application seeks permission to install an internally illuminated pylon sign - two metres wide by four metres high - on the corner of Mountain Highway and Forest Road, to advertise petrol prices and the Shell logo.

Knox Council has also confirmed that the permit application outlines the business would operate from 6am to 11pm daily.

Manager of The Basin Community Noticeboard Facebook page, Elise Lacey, told the Eastern Melburnian the proposed service station would revitalise the site but said the illuminated sign would not fit with the community’s character.

“I hope this new business creates job opportunities for local kids, giving them a chance to work close to home,” she said.

You can make a submission to the planning permit application here.

SEEN THIS WEEK 🤓

The ballot to name Box Hill

What does a hill in south east England and an area in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs have in common? They both have the same name: Box Hill.

The area’s postmaster, Silas Padgham, proposed the name as it was the name of a hill near his birthplace in Dorking, England.

I loved diving into this unique slice of history.

While modern Box Hill is characterised by its busy retail hubs, great food and large-scale developments, it is comforting to know that it too had quaint beginnings, where there were about 100 or so people who knew everyone and bumped into each other on the way to the post office or the only pub in town.