Maintenance of road verges surrounding private property

The maintenance of our road verges (also known as nature strips) play an important role in the presentation of your street.  Road verges are located between your property boundary and the edge of road or kerb. They provide open space that allows:

• the safe movement of pedestrians as they walk past your property
• clear sight lines for vehicles and cyclists as they drive or ride past your property.

Road verges typically contain turf, gardens, street trees and footpaths. In most cases your property will have a road verge at the front of your house/property or business. Some properties may also have surrounding road verges if positioned on a corner block or where the property has private rear access such as terrace homes, commercial or light industrial business areas.

Who looks after your road verge?

It is a common and accepted practice that residents/property or business owners maintain turf and garden areas within the road verge (excluding street trees) surrounding their properties. Maintaining your road verge can include:

• mowing, slashing, hand weeding, watering or edging of turf
• hand weeding, watering, pruning or trimming a garden within the road verge along your property. Further information is on the planting a garden on a road verge page
• watering of street trees within the road verge.

Council may prune, mulch or replace street trees if and when required. Visit the street tree maintenance page for more information on how you can help take care of street trees.

When is it appropriate for council to maintain a road verge?

We (council) are committed to providing un-obstructed and safe flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic by ensuring road corridors (including road verges) are safe, functional and accessible to the community. We will maintain road verges in the following scenarios:

• Public reserve areas such as beaches, foreshores, bushland, parks and gardens
• Council facilities such as public buildings, recreation grounds or swimming pools
• Central business districts
• Water Sensitive Urban Design devices (also known as Biopods and Raingardens)
• Median strips
• Roundabouts centres and surrounds
• Areas where sight lines are impeded due to vegetation creating a traffic and/or pedestrian safety hazard. Maintenance of these areas will be determined as required, with generally three to four services undertaken per annum
• Road verges abutting the rear of properties where there is no immediate access
• Where there is a safety risk to the residents in carrying out maintenance on the road verge, such as very steep verges.

Working together

In some instances we (council) may support residents removing gardens beds and installing turf at their own cost for ease of maintenance.  We will consider and liaise with residents on such matters.

We do not carry out routine maintenance of verges surrounding private, commercial, industrial or council leased properties. We acknowledge that residents may undertake this activity as a contribution to the amenity of the area, which allows council to direct its resources to other services.

For further information, view the Maintenance of road verge surrounding private property policy (PDF, 1898KB).