Routine maintenance for trees and parks
At the City of Port Phillip, we’re committed to keeping your neighbourhoods safe, welcoming, and well maintained for everyone to enjoy. Our teams work year round to care for local parks, playgrounds, trees, sports fields and open spaces. This includes regular tree inspections and pruning, park and turf maintenance, mowing, playground safety checks, and weed management. All our tree work is guided by the City’s Urban Forest Strategy, ensuring we care for our natural environment in a sustainable and responsible way.
Whether you're relaxing in a park, enjoying a play space, or using one of our sporting facilities, we’re working behind the scenes to keep your outdoor areas in excellent condition.
You can find our upcoming scheduled works in links below each table.
Occasionally, we may need to adjust our maintenance schedule due to weather conditions, storm‑related clean‑ups, or additional preparations during busy summer periods. When this happens, we do our best to catch up as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we continue working to support our thriving community.
Tree Maintenance and Inspections
Council manages over 46,000 trees and maintains these as part of scheduled inspection and pruning programs outlined below. Outside of these schedules, we will only prune if there is an urgent need, like a tree or branch blocking a road or footpath or a risk to public safety. In general, we prefer to do as little pruning as possible, while ensuring the safety and amenity of residents. This is because pruning can cause irreversible damage to the tree.
If you log a tree pruning request for a tree that is scheduled for inspection or pruning in the next six months and not considered high risk, the works will be carried out in the scheduled works timeframe. Check our tree pruning schedules to see when we'll be in your neighbourhood.
Tree Pruning
| Type of pruning | Frequency of pruning |
| Routine pruning as part of our schedule | As needed after inspection (see routine inspection frequencies below) |
| Reactive pruning considered urgent and required outside of our schedule | Within 20 business days following inspection (if deemed necessary) |
Tree Inspections
| Location/Tree Type | Frequency of inspections |
| Annually |
| Every two years |
Pollarded Plane Trees:
| Twice annually |
Pollarded Mulberry Trees:
| Three times annually |
Palms
| Four times annually |
Tree pest and disease control
| Tree pest/disease type | Frequency of inspection/treatment |
Elm Trees - Elm Leaf Beetle
| Every three years |
Palms - Fusarium Wilt
| Annually |
Plane Trees - Anthracnose
| Annually |
Tree watering
| Tree type | Frequency |
| Newly planted trees (year 1) | Weekly |
| Newly planted trees (year 2) | Fortnightly |
| Established trees (3 plus years) | As required |
Weed Control
The City of Port Phillip is responsible for maintaining 353 hectares of public open space, as well as roads, laneways and footpaths. Weed control is an important part of our routine maintenance in these areas. Keeping our roads, footpaths and laneways weed-free prevents obstructions, trip hazards, and flooding. It also encourages biodiversity in native vegetation areas, ensures the plants in our parks and gardens thrive, and means our community gets the best use of our public spaces.
We manage weeds in different ways depending on where they are:
| Location | Weed Control Method |
| Playgrounds/play spaces, picnic areas | Hand pulled (no herbicide used) |
Parks and gardens, Council building surrounds, traffic treatments, roads, footpaths and laneways | Weeds greater than 50cm tall - hand pulled Weeds smaller than 50cm tall - sprayed with approved herbicide |
We use a glyphosate-based herbicide (Roundup Biactive) that has been specifically formulated for use in environmentally sensitive areas, for control of a broad spectrum of annual, perennial and aquatic weeds. When dry, it becomes inactive. It is approved for use in areas such as around streams, creeks, dams, channels and drains, and widely used by local councils across Australia in open space areas. You can read more on information on our Glyphosate Fact Sheet.
We do not use herbicide in areas where children play, or areas used for picnics. In these areas, we employ other methods of weed control such as hand pulling or organic herbicide.
Keeping our community green and clean with our weed control programs, we spray all the gutters, curbs, and paths to take care of those pesky weeds. The municipality is split into 20 zones which are sprayed on a 9-week cycle, and nine commercial precinct zones which are sprayed on a 3-week cycle. Please note, windy and rainy weather conditions may cause us to run behind our weed spraying schedule, and we appreciate your patience whilst we catch up.
If you notice any spots we missed or things blocking our way, just let us know through the easy My Port Phillip customer portal or the Snap Send Solve app. Let's team up to make our city weed-free and safe.
Garden Bed Maintenance
| Location / site type | Frequency |
| St Kilda Botanical Gardens and St Vincent Gardens | Gardeners on site daily |
| Garden City Reserve and Alma Park East | Shared gardeners between these two sites |
| Other parks/reserves and traffic treatments | Fortnightly |
| Native Vegetation Areas | Every four weeks |
| Water Sensitive Urban Designs Gardens including raingardens, tree pit, ephemeral ponds | Every four weeks |
Additional servicing is carried out at the following sites during the Summer Management Period (1 November – 30 April):
- O’Donnell Gardens, St Kilda
- St Kilda Foreshore
- Point Ormond, Elwood
- Sandridge Foreshore, Port Melbourne
- The Slopes – Jacka Boulevard, St Kilda
Mowing
We undertake mowing in parks, gardens, road reserves and sportsgrounds. The City of Port Phillip is contracted by VicRoads to maintain grass on main arterial roads within the municipality.
| Location / site type | Frequency |
| Significant parks, sportsground surrounds, community building surrounds | Every two weeks |
| Neighbourhood parks and reserves | Every three weeks |
| Road reserves including arterial (Transport Victoria) road centre medians | Every four weeks |
| Sportsgrounds | Weekly |
Playgrounds
We carry out different kinds of inspections at all council managed public space playgrounds.
| Inspection type | Frequency |
| Playground cleanliness inspection (level 1) | Weekly |
| Playground safety audits (level 2) | Every four weeks |
| Comprehensive playground inspection (level 3) | Annually |
Contact us
Our Parks and Trees team is here to help.
Send us a message on My Port Phillip
Phone: 03 9209 6777