Gardening With Native Plants | Australian Plants Society

Mulch and native plants – a few thoughts

There have been many articles written on mulch, and the following are my views together with the results of some research that you may find of benefit.

The wonderful world of wattles or Amazing acacias

Acacias are very representative of Australia. With about 1,000 species, the shrubs and trees are found across Australia in a range of ecosystems including rainforest. This article is a summary of Rhonda’s talk at the APS NSW quarterly gathering on 14 September 2024 hosted by Harbour Georges River Group.

Boronia success at last

Boronias have the reputation for being difficult to maintain in the garden. In this article, Jeff explains how he successfully grew a Boronias Showoff in his backyard after years of careful preparation!

How to create a bushland or habitat garden

A bushland or habitat garden mimics nature. Such gardens are designed to create as much habitat as possible for local wildlife.

Bush Foods for your Home Garden

On one of our walks back in January, we visited the soon to be launched Bush Food Walk at the University of Wollongong. Some of you may know I am working on a similar project at the Illawarra Grevillea Park Botanic Garden, so I thought I might pass on a few suggestions for growing native food plants in the home garden.

Sturt Desert Peas don’t grow in Sydney, do they?

Over the past 6 months, I’ve been having a go at growing a Sturt Desert Pea (Swainsona formsa) plant from seed, with some minor success. I thought I’d put together a little report on what I did and what the results were.

Recycling old clay pipes for garden use

Dan explains the utility of recycling clay pipes in modern gardening.

Designing your native garden

At the quarterly gathering in March 2024, Heather Miles gave an interactive talk on designing your native garden.

Garden Design in Theory and Practice

At the Harbour George River Group’s meeting October 2023, James Middleton, who is a
member of the Group and a professional landscape gardener, described his practice in
landscape design. His talk was illustrated with reference to a community garden project he is
working on with the Clemton Park Uniting Church. Members of the church group also talked
about their vision for the garden. This was followed by a discussion on how to implement the
garden vision with a limited budget and lots of muscle power.

Botanical Vampires! Parasitic and Carnivorous Plants in Hawkesbury Sandstone Vegetation

In Hawkesbury Sandstone vegetation a range of parasitic and carnivorous plants can be found. Does it surprise you to know that you could find more than ten different species? Many of these plants can be hard to find: some are ephemeral (short-lived); some very small; a few grow high in the branches of trees; and others are rare.

Creative ecology – mini forests as one strategy for urban greening

Global warming, biodiversity loss and the deteriorating urban environment are reducing the quality of urban life. Akira Miyawaki, a Japanese botanist, began practising creative ecology in the 1970s and devised the “tiny forest” to counter these undesirable trends. Tiny forests have been taken up in Australia recently and may be useful as a strategy in improving some environmental and social aspects of our urban environments.

All about mulch

A mulch is any covering put over the top of the soil, such as bark, woodchips, leaves, gravel and groundcovers – even a layer of leaf litter counts as a mulch.

An old burrawang in a new garden

About 40 years ago, in the early 1980s I took the family to stay in some cabins near Racecourse Beach just north of Batemans Bay for the summer holidays, shaded by iconic spotted gums with a burrawang understory.

Embrace mistletoes, don’t cut them loose

Seeing isolated dead trees that show signs of past, heavy mistletoe growth in our semi-cleared landscapes might suggest that mistletoes are the culprit. On the contrary, they are keystone ecological species, attractive components of our flora and can be part of our own gardens.

Amazing Greys

I feel confident anyone reading this would agree that gardeners have a better insight than most into changing weather patterns. Whatever the reason, the hot days seem to be getting hotter and the cold days colder but it’s usually the former that presents the greater challenges in selecting the right plant for the hot spot. Enter stage right our wonderful grey-foliaged native plants.

Dividing Some Christmas Bells

I have had for some years now a large pot of Christmas Bells (Blandfordia grandiflora). It has been reliably flowering just on Christmas every year, and in the process getting more congested. Because the pot it is in has curved sides, I have been putting off dividing it for a few years.

Ample acacias

Member Walter Stanish has shared with us images of his residential garden wattle season in Thornleigh, by the Great North Walk.

Exploring ephemeral arid plants of NSW

The arid and semi-arid plants of NSW demonstrate some extraordinary adaptations to climate, soils and microclimate!

A Bush-Tucker Garden

At the Sutherlands group May meeting, Samantha Newton, an enthusiastic garden designer who has had a life of botany, landscape design, and researching ecological-sustainability issues shared her knowledge about Bush-Tucker.

Achieving a New Civic Australian Style Garden

At the May 2023 APS NSW gathering in Kariong, hosted by the Central Coast APS group, Olga Blacha gave us a fascinating talk titled: ‘Achieving a new civic Australian style garden’

Design with Nature

Throughout hiscareer Lawie Smith has been fortunate to be able to convey his ‘Design with Nature’ philosophy through all of his projects, and specifically the public parks and botanic gardens for which he have been responsible.

Grafting, using the cutting graft technique

In this article we discuss the advantages of an alturnitive method over more traditional methods of grafting onto rooted stock plants.

2024 ANPSA Biennial Conference, 30 Sept to 4 Oct

Gardens For Life – Second update from APS VIC This is the second newsletter from our colleagues in Victoria, sharing about the Biennial Confrence, coming up in September 2024

How to grow a native garden

I recently shared with a Garden Club how to create a native garden, why grow natives and how to go about it, as well as traps for the unwary. Here is what I shared.

Nature strip planting

A naturestrip is a legally interesting piece of land. It is public land owned by the council with the ‘responsibility’ for its maintenance resting with the home-owner.

Healthy soil, healthy garden

Soil may seem plain to the eye but it’s a complex ecosystem in itself – if it’s a healthy soil, anyway. Maintaining a diverse range of soil microbes is important for soil to remain healthy and support good plant growth. The most practical way for gardeners to keep soil and plants healthy is by adding both organic matter and inorganic fertiliser.

Study group updates December 2022 – March 2023

Keep up to date with what our study groups are doing, with updates from Pea Flowers, Acacia, Grevillea, Wallum, Ferns and Hakea groups.

Preparing your garden for the predicted dry weather

The weather forecasts now have us coming out of the wet La Nina conditions over the last few years and heading into the warmer & drier El Nino weather pattern.

Diversity or uniformity in garden design

As part of the Garden Design Study Group (free to all members), the topic was posed – is your garden design influenced by diversity or uniformity? I thought about it, and decided that my garden and my thinking had evolved through stages

Aceratium ferrugineum – an ornamental rainforest plant

Here are some images from Peter Olde, of Aceratium ferrugineum, a beautiful rainforest plant growing in his and Margaret’s Oakdale garden.

The Tasmanian bushland garden

Over 20 years ago a group of Australian Plants Society members purchased an old dolerite quarry and its surrounding 20 ha bushland to build a Tasmanian bushland garden with funding coming from donations and grants.

Mal’s Wild Side: Re-Wilding a Northern Beaches Backyard

When I first came to Australia from the UK, I had a fondness for the environment but knew virtually nothing about Australian nature. Years later, when I moved from inner city living into a suburban house with a backyard, something special happened. Fascinating visitors such as Blue Tongue Lizards, Leaf Tailed Geckos and Possums provided magical wildlife encounters and my conservation passion, long suppressed, became reignited.

Eremophila standards

Growing Eremophila standards is all quite new to me but I’m having a ball experimenting with how different plants can look when grown on a stick. Grafting them has been relatively easy, as has been keeping an attractive habit while the plants are still young. However, pruning as the plants age, will I’m sure, be more of a challenge.

Story Category: Gardening With Native Plants