By Violet Li
Community organisation Friends of the Tulliallan Elms had its Quarterly Friends Gathering on Sunday 7 July, centring on tree conservation.
The crowd gathered at Tulliallan Avenue of Elms in the early morning mist in Clyde North, starting with educational training by president Raavenan Jayaraman.
“After the training, I divided them into two teams, one team to pick up the litter. I asked the other team to label the trees because in March we labelled the trees with laminated paper and with the rain and everything, they came out,” Raavenan said.
“This time I bought the copper plate. They have a special copper plate to label trees from Bunnings.”
Bill Cook, former manager of Tulliallan Farm, and Kowan Ward candidates Kasuni Mendis and Joby George joined the conservation as special guests.
As the group’s last tree conservation program was in March this year, Raavenan talked about experiences with elm trees in seasonal changes.
“The trees have now lost all the leaves, so you can see the true structure of them. What’s more visible is you can see where the bird nest is situated in the tree.
“It’s a bit of a cold, dark kind of winter image when you look at the trees. Winter goes and then you get autumn and then you get spring again. This is the cycle of life.
“To think that the trees have stood there for 124 years. How many cycles have they gone through and standing there? That’s amazing.”
