The Project Hindmarsh tree planning weekend will be held from this Friday to Sunday and will be marking 25 years of the project.

After the popular planting weekends were cancelled in both 2020 and 2021 due to pandemic lockdowns and social distancing rules, volunteers are keen to return and get their hands dirty.

Despite the cancellations over the last two years, contractors planted nearly 12,500 plants each year.

This weekend will start at 4 pm on Friday when volunteers can register at the Dimboola Recreation Reserve.

Local volunteers can join Hindmarsh Landcare from 6 am on Saturday for breakfast before heading off to the planting sites at 8 am.

There will be two sites around Dimboola this year. One is at Snape Reserve, west of the town, where around 1,500 plants will go into open ground amongst Desert Stringybark and Yellow Gum woodland, and the second site and main site is three kilometres south-east of Dimboola, off Gierke Road, where volunteers will plant 10,000 plants to re-establish a Yellow Gum and Native Pine woodland on a site that is a mix of degraded remnant vegetation, reclaimed farmland, and native grassland.

Volunteers will be involved in planting these seedlings, placing guards around them to protect them from wildlife, and watering each one.

Camping is available at the recreation reserve and the adjacent caravan park. All meals on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday are provided, with the Saturday evening meal catered by the Nhill Karen community.

The Project Hindmarsh planting weekend is the longest-running event of its kind in Australia, having commenced in the late 1990s with the aim of completing a vegetation link between the Little and Big Deserts. While this significant milestone was achieved after five years, it has continued with several projects linking the Central Wimmera to the Wimmera River, contributing to the vegetation corridor from Lake Hindmarsh and the Western Wimmera to the Grampians.

Above - Tress being planted at a site just west of Jeparit during the twentieth Project Hindmarsh planting weekend in 2017.