A PUSH to transform suburban nature strips into greener community spaces has been backed by Mornington Peninsula Shire councillors.
Cr David Gill brought forward the notice of motion seeking a report on “progress with local street community partnerships to help enable the greening of nature strips by residents in line with climate change initiative policies of council”.
The motion drew on research from the University of Melbourne which showed nature strips make up close to 40 per cent of green public space in urban neighbourhoods and around seven per cent of residential land mass.
Multiple councils are allowing residents to plant out their nature strips with native species, and Gill said he believes the shire should allow this freedom for peninsula residents.
“What I’m trying to do is encourage – we’ve got policies like urban greening or urban forest strategy – to see if we can encourage people to undertake these things and find a way for us to be able to help people,” said Gill.
Council officers advised that work was underway for a review of the Private Works on Nature Strip Policy and that a progress report would be presented to councillors at a workshop by August 2026.
Gill said the proposal was intended to support neighbourhood cooperation and allow residents to decide together how their streets should look while remaining within council guidelines.
“They get to choose street by street,” said Gill.
“That I think is the ambition and the outcome will be we’ll have a lot more planting of trees in our residential areas and that’s got to be a good outcome.”
“There’s a lot of nature strip land; it’s a big percentage of what we actually have on a normal size block sitting out there and a lot of people don’t utilise it.”
Gill said future guidelines would need to balance greening efforts with safety and access requirements.
“We can’t allow people to block view lines for cars, we can’t have rocks that people might run into on the edge of the nature strip,” said Gill.
“There are things that are just fairly clear where we should have guidelines.”
Cr Stephen Batty opposed the motion and said he would advise against neighbours getting together and deciding what they’re going to do with their nature strips.
He said in some areas, nature strips are used as walking paths.
“If you have residents planting trees and planting on the nature strips, you’re going to prevent pedestrians from walking on these nature strips to get from A to B,” said Batty.
He said he would rather wait until the officers report in August 2026 and see what it provides.
Cr Patrick Binyon said he understands why they would wait for the council officer report but that he supports the idea.
“I like the idea of residents being able to collaborate with their neighbours and then work out what can go on a nature strip,” said Binyon.
“I think that if you remove the tension and you remove the barriers, you’ll find that people come up with some creative solutions and as you’ve said before if we are clear with what they can’t be planning, it gives them some guidelines.”
Gill noted that any participation is voluntary and that residents who wish to keep traditional grassed nature strips would still be able to.
The motion was passed following debate, with councillors Gill, Stephens, Williams, Ranken, Binyon, Patton, and Pingiaro voting in favour, while councillors Batty and Allen were against.
First published in the Mornington News – 19 May 2026
