Planting day is a milestone, but it’s not the finish line. Young plants face a gauntlet of threats, browsing animals, herbicide drift, and climatic extremes — and how you protect them matters as much as whether you protect them.
As environmental accountability grows across the industry, there are more sustainable options than ever to choose from, but which one is right for your planting?
Biodegradable Mesh Guards: Protection Without the Plastic Legacy
Conventional plastic mesh guards have long been a workhorse of open planting environments. They allow airflow, give plants room to grow, and hold up well in field conditions. The problem is what happens at the end of life; if left on site, they fragment into long-lasting microplastics that enter waterways and soils, creating an environmental liability that undermines the restoration work they were there to support.
Biodegradable mesh guards, made from bio-based polymers, solve this problem without compromising on performance. A quality option will deliver 18+ months of field life before breaking down into carbon dioxide and water, with no persistent nanoparticles. They’re the right choice for ecologically sensitive sites; riparian zones, wetland buffers, coastal plantings – where plastic ingress into waterways is a genuine risk. Arborgreen’s ECO-MESH® is one example
Worth noting: like all open mesh guards, they don’t protect against herbicide spray drift. On sites with intensive post-planting weed control, a tube-style guard will serve you better.
Cardboard and Paper Tube Guards: Plant It and Walk Away
Tube guards create a sheltered microclimate for young plants; protection from wind, frost, and chemical drift, and the shift toward fibre-based options has changed the economics of large-scale planting programs significantly. The key advantage is simple: they biodegrade in the field. No recollection crews, no plastic to landfill, no guards scattering across a site after a storm.
For large programs where thousands of guards are deployed across wide areas, the labour cost of retrieval is real. Board-based tube guards eliminate it entirely. Look for products carrying Australian compostability certifications (AS 4736-2006 or AS 5810-2010) for independently verified breakdown standards. The GreenGuard™ BIO-TUBE is a certified example designed specifically for large-scale planting programs.
The trade-off is lifespan, fibre guards won’t match multi-year plastic durability, and in high-rainfall environments, breakdown can occur faster than expected. Match the product to your climate and protection window accordingly.
Browsing Deterrents: An underrated alternative
Where physical guards protect plants from the outside, browsing deterrents make the plant itself unappealing. On large sites with significant browsing pressure, installing guards tall and robust enough to exclude kangaroos and wallabies across every seedling is often impractical. Deterrents fill that gap.
Applied directly to foliage at planting, quality deterrents use a combination of sensory repellents and grit-based ingredients to create aversion through both smell and taste. Over time, animals learn to forage elsewhere. Sen-Tree™, developed by Agriculture Victoria and Arborgreen, offers up to 12 weeks of protection per application, is non-toxic to animals, and is registered nationally.
Deterrents work best as part of a layered strategy rather than a standalone solution – particularly effective on large open sites or as a complement to standard tube guards where browse risk from larger animals remains.
The right protection strategy matches the right system to the site. For more advice on what to look for in protecting large-scale plantings, Arborgreen has further resources available as well as expert advice at arborgreen.com.au
Arborgreen is a Gold Sponsor of AIH – Find out more about sponsorship HERE
