paul mallett advocates for building a Launceston that grows, progressively and on purpose, into a real city in a garden.

Launceston already has magnificent parks. The Gorge. City Park. Princes Square. These are gifts. But a park is somewhere you go to. A city in a garden is somewhere you live in. The green woven through every street, every suburb, every postcode. Shade overhead instead of heat rising off bitumen. Fruit trees on the path to school. A garden on the corner where the neighbourhood gathers. A canopy so complete that walking across this city in summer becomes a pleasure instead of a punishment.

We are sitting at around 20 per cent urban tree canopy cover. On a forty degree day, a bare street runs more than ten degrees hotter than a shaded one. Walk from the Museum to Inveresk in February and you will know exactly what that means. We have quietly engineered the heat into our city and then wondered why people stay indoors.

The aim is to change that. Not all at once. Not in a single term. But with a commitment across councils to a long game: three times the canopy we have now, a community garden in every postcode, edible trails running through the suburbs, and streets designed to invite people out rather than drive them in.

The green canopy

The goal paul is putting forward is greater than 60 per cent canopy cover within a generation. One tree at a time, across the CBD, in every suburb, no postcode left bare. Shaded streets you can actually walk in summer. Cooling corridors connecting the city from one end to the other. Routes where children walk to school without wilting and elders take the long way because the long way is worth taking. The research on urban greening is consistent: every dollar invested in trees comes back in health costs avoided, water saved, and streets people choose to use. This is prevention thinking applied to the environment. Plant now. Pay less later.

Community gardens and edible trails

Universal community gardens in every neighbourhood, seeded by council and stewarded by the community. Garden beds on every street. Citrus and stone fruit planted along everyday walking routes. Herbs in the verges. Produce shared freely. The evidence is clear: where gardens go in, loneliness falls, mental health improves, elders stay more mobile, and kids arrive at school nourished and ready. These are not side benefits. They are the point. The garden is the intervention. It just does not feel like one. And this would not be a program for the suburbs we label as struggling. Universal. Every postcode. Civic pride, not charity.

Bringing the bees back

Every tree planted, every garden seeded, every edible trail laid is a small vote for a city that makes room for life. Bee populations are under pressure everywhere. The cause is not complicated: we have taken away their habitat, their flowers, their food. A city in a garden is a city that pollinators can live in.

Butterfly enclosure for City Park

And when the time comes, paul would love to see the old monkey enclosure in City Park become a butterfly enclosure. A warm, living space of monarchs, ulysses, and swallowtails.  Colour and flight and quiet wonder at the heart of the park every Launceston kid grew up calling Monkey Park. Picture the next generation asking: can we go to Butterfly Park? The monkeys are still there and the park is still theirs. But the vision is worth naming now.

Let’s keep building

The best time to plant a tree was thirty years ago. The second best time is now. A generation from now, this city could be cooler, greener, healthier, and more connected than it has ever been. paul believes that is worth starting.

A city in a garden is not a luxury. It is what enables life.