Looking up the trunks of mountain ash in Sherbrooke Forest against a blue sky

Tree removal in Olinda

Olinda sits under the ranges overlay everywhere we looked, and often under two more. A tree near the house can be exempt from one and still need a permit under another.

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Sherbrooke Forest. Photo: Haworthia Ihlathi, CC BY-SA 4.0

The rule in Olinda

Every one of the 25 points we sampled around Olinda was under Yarra Ranges' ranges overlay, SLO1. It asks for a council permit before you remove native vegetation that grows naturally in the shire, at any size, and any other tree once its trunk passes this:

1.1 m: around, at 1.3 m above the ground, which is a trunk about 35 cm across. An exotic tree smaller than that is outside SLO1. A native one is not.

Drawn to scale around a 12 m by 9 m house. The dashed ring is a state rule; the solid ring is a council overlay.

4 m: If the base of the plant is within 4 m of a lawful building, SLO1 doesn't apply. Branches over a building can be pruned until they are 4 m clear.
10 m: The state's 10/30 rule. All 25 points were in a Bushfire Prone Area and the Bushfire Management Overlay, so an older house may also have the 50 m rule for everything but trees. The conditions.

SLO1 also lets dead vegetation go, along with pruning of up to a third of a plant's foliage for its health, and species on Yarra Ranges' List of Environmental Weeds 2019.

Get a free property report from VicPlan to see which overlays cover your block.

Checked 7 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 1 to Clause 42.03 (SLO1) and Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.12 (bushfire protection exemptions).

Three overlays on one block

SLO1 is rarely alone in Olinda. Of our 25 points, 16 were also under an erosion overlay and 13 under ESO1, the environmental overlay. A block can carry all three, and a tree has to clear each one.

ESO1 needs a permit for native vegetation. Its near-building exemption also reaches 4 m, and exotic trees are outside it. The catch is dead trees: a standing dead tree more than 1.3 m around still needs an ESO1 permit, though SLO1 alone would let it go.
The erosion overlays (EMO and EMO3) mark ground prone to landslip. They need a permit to remove vegetation unless it is a tree 50 cm or less around, within 2 m of a building, or dead with the ground made good afterwards. That 2 m is tighter than SLO1's 4 m, so on an erosion block a tree 3 m from the house can still need a permit.

Checked 7 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 1 to Clause 42.01 (ESO1), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule to Clause 44.01 (EMO) and Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 3 to Clause 44.01 (EMO3).

Gardens with their own tree controls

Olinda grew from a logging settlement into berry farms, flower growing and, by the 1920s, guesthouses and weekend homes. Some of its gardens are now heritage places. The National Rhododendron Gardens on Falls Road and Miss Reid's Castle on Range Road are both in the Heritage Overlay with tree controls, so removing a tree there needs a heritage permit as well. For an ordinary house block, the property report shows whether any heritage overlay applies.

After the 1962 fires the old golf course east of the township was rebuilt partly as a firebreak for the town. That land is now the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden.

Checked 7 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule to Clause 43.01 (Heritage Overlay), Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 43.01 (Heritage Overlay) and Wikipedia: Olinda, Victoria.

The rule next door

Mount Dandenong, Kalorama, Sassafras, Sherbrooke, Kallista and The Patch: SLO1 again, at every point we sampled. What changes is how much erosion and environmental overlay sits on top.
Monbulk and Silvan: Downhill to the east, the farming overlay SLO5 has the same 1.1 m and 4 m, and Monbulk's township has SLO22's stricter 50 cm and 2 m.

Each council's overlays are in the permit guide.

Checked 7 October 2026 against Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 1 to Clause 42.03 (SLO1), Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 5 to Clause 42.03 (SLO5) and Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme, Schedule 22 to Clause 42.03 (SLO22).

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