In one of his presentations Attila Kapitany, author of Australian
Succulent Plants - An Introduction, made me aware of the incredible
range of Australia native succulent plants that exist on our
incredible continent but that few Australians are remotely aware of.
I was familiar with a few local species of succulent -
Carpobrotus, Disphyma, Maireana, Enchylaena and Portulaca oleracea.
The latter is a rather cosmopolitan plant that is known in Europe as
purslane where it is a very valuable medicinal plant, while in
Australia Aborigines valued it as a leafy green vegetable. But alas
European Australians call it Pig Weed, a ubiquitous weed of gardens
and paddocks, and regard it as a nuisance.
I was always reluctant to create native succulent landscapes due
to this inadequate variety of species. To date botanists have
regarded Australia as having few succulent species and none of
particular note. Until Attila, a long time succulent enthusiast,
came along and started looking a little closer at the outback
Australia that many tourists are familiar with.
Some Australian native succulent plants are right in our face but
we have failed to realize it. These include the familiar boab trees
(Adansonia gregorii) and bottle trees (Brachychiton rupestris and
Brachychiton compactus etc) and the ubiquitous landscape plant Gymea
Lily (Doryanthes excelsa) and the less well known Spear Lily
(Doryanthes plamerii). Despite their common name of lily, the latter
two actually belong to the Agavaceae family of plants, that
contains the familiar exotic Agave and Yucca. And indeed if you look
at the base of the leaves of Doryanthes, particularly Doryanthes
palmerii, they are rather Agave like.
But there is far more than just these and sadly none of them are
in widespread cultivation or propagation. Why??? Here are a few:
Sarcocornia blackiana
Sarcocornia quinqueflora
Sarcostemma viminale
Maireana sedifolia
Maireana erioclada
Myrmecodia playtyrea / Ant Plant
This genus forms symbiotic relationships with various native
ants. The swollen base of the plants contain an intricate network of
passages and chambers that forms an ideal nest for the ants. In
return the ants protect the plant from nibbling insects.
Hoya australis
Dischidia nummularia
Calostemma purpureum
Calandrinia polyandra
Sarcozona praecox
This is closely related to and looks very similar to the more
commonly seen Carpobrotus or Pig Faces. However it forms a neat
mound rather than spreading widely.
Since so few Australians are propagating these species and they
are virtually unknown and unavailable to the general public, I
would dearly love do so myself and make as many them as possible
available through my online nursery.
I may have found a source of propagation material for a few more
of these species thus making expensive field trips unnecessary.
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Click here to
view it.
I am proud to announce that I have recently
received a Green Gardeners certification from Melbourne Water and
Sustainable Gardening Australia. It has re-affirmed
many of the ecologically principals that I apply to my landscaping
projects.
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You can purchase a variety of plants directly from me
at my very own online nursery. It is not quite as sophisticated as Oztion in that payments
are not integrated into the 'shopping cart' and must be made once
you receive an invoice, via email, from me. You can still pay
via direct bank deposits, Paypal
and Paymate but you must do
so from the relevant websites rather than mine.
Grandstand Way, Wollert
Why limit your native garden to purely ornamental natives?
Here are a few productive native plants that you can include.
These are not indigenous to the Melbourne region but are none the
less useful plants.
Santalum acuminatum /
Quandong
You may have heard of Quandongs before but few
Australians no what they are. So here is the fruit and the tree that
produces them.
It is a small to medium tree and it is
semi-parasitic. The tree obtains a proportion of its nutrients and
water from a variety of other plant species by tapping into the root
systems. Hence to grow it you need to have one or more 'host' plants
nearby.
In the wild Eucalyptus and Acacia are
common hosts. In plantations Myoporum parvifolium is used as
a host plant. Host plants need to be fast growing and robust in
order to withstand Santulum.
The species normally grows in inland Australia in
quite dry climates and impoverished soils. So in a garden or a
plantation, every year is a good year for Santalum. I can
confirm that they grow quite well around Melbourne but, if you have
heavy clay soil, it would pay to plant them in raised gardens with
good drainage. Mine are yet to fruit but I am confident they will in
a year or two.
Apparently it is a favored food of emus and
Aborigines used to hide in the trees and spear them when they
arrived to partake of the fruit.
The fruit has a slightly salty and sweet taste.
Sometimes they can have a bit of a tang to them, similar to red
wine, depending on how much tannin they contain.
The fruit makes excellent tarts, sauces and
chutneys.
Kunzea pomifera /
Muntries
This is a tough and dense little sprawling shrub
that also grows in dry areas of southern Australia. It has feathery
white flowers and is a useful ornamental ground cover as well as a
productive plant.
As you can see it produce miniature apple like
berries that taste something like Granny-Smith Apples. They make
great apple pies and can be eaten raw.
Plantation growers of this species train them up
vertical trellis to make harvesting the berries easier.
I can also report that these grow quite well in
Melbourne but again it would be advisable to plant them in raised
gardens that don't become waterlogged for any significant length of
time.
Macadamia integrifolia /
Australian Macadamia
Source of Australia's famous Macadamia nut.
This is not only an attractive leafy tree, but will provide you
with delicious nuts.
They will grow in southern Australia, but unlikely as large as
they would in their native north eastern Australia.
They are surprisingly drought tolerant once established, but you
may have to give them some TLC while they are doing so.
Hymenosporum flavum /
Native Frangipani
This another attractive leafy tree from north eastern Australia
that will grow quite happily in southern Australia, though usually
considerably smaller.
The flowers have a strong exotic frangipani like fragrance,
although they are not closely related.
They are quite fast growing.
Alternative Garden Edging
If you don't like the idea of the arsenic
in treated pine sleepers but you are also concerned about the
fact that untreated hardwood sleepers come from unsustainable
logging of old growth forests then perhaps this alternative is
for you.
They are coir logs made of the same
material that coir front door mats are made off. The consist of a
cargo net woven into a tube and densely packed with coir fibre. The
come in lengths of 3 metres with a diameter of 30cm and in either a cylindrical
or square profile. They made from
the by products of the coconut processing industry.
Advantages:
- They are a sustainable product.
- They contain no toxic
preservatives.
- They are flexible and will mould
to the ground profile and can be tightly curved as long as they
are adequately anchored.
- They can be stacked to form small
retaining walls.
- They have a much softer and more
organic look than sleepers.
- They are very easy to install
simply requiring some tent pegs or star pickets to anchor them
in place.
- They will not buckle or tilt as a
result of earth movement.
- They have a similar life span to
untreated sleepers.
They can be lined with builders
plastic, or any waste plastic, to prevent soil infiltration thus
further prolonging their life.
Click here if
you don't understand what indigenous plants (also
called local native plants) are and how they differ
from exotic plants and Australian native plants.
Here are some very good reasons why you should
consider using indigenous plants in your garden:
- They thrive in the heavy clay soils of the
basalt plains region of Melbourne, in the poor sandy soils of
the coastal areas and in the stony Silurian soils to the east
and north east of Melbourne.
- They easily withstand Melbourne's hot dry
summers and periodic droughts with little or no watering.
- They are very efficient at gleaning what
little nutrients there are in our impoverished soils.
- Most indigenous plants grow quickly and
flower within the first season of being planted.
- There is no risk of indigenous plants
becoming environmental weeds.
- Indigenous gardens provide badly needed
habitat for our unique native fauna.
- They cost considerably less.
- Indigenous plants are far easier to
plant in hard soils because they only require a small hole.
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- Full range of plants indigenous to the
basalt plains region of Melbourne.
- If I don't have it on hand I can normally
get it within a couple of days.
- Orders delivered FREE of charge if
you are local (Epping) or if ordering 48 plants or more.
- Forestry tubes and cell trays.
- Limited range of advanced indigenous
plants.
Click here for
further details.
My indigenous landscapes/local native
landscapes are based on ecological principals and:
- Meet the expectations of gardeners while
harmonizing with the surrounding natural
landscape.
- Provide badly needed habitat for local
wildlife.
- Contain no environmental
or noxious weeds.
- Require little or no watering or
fertilizing once established.
- Naturally suppress weed growth.
Many landscapers only consider what their
landscapes look like upon completion. But coming from a Conservation
& Land Management background I know what they can end up looking
like 12 months later.
Without incorporating effective weed
suppression measures in the design and appropriate regular follow up
your nice new landscape can quickly turn into an unsightly weedscape.
Bare soils, sparse planting and the use of
regular soil mixes from landscape suppliers can lead to a very
disappointing result.
My landscapes also contain more plants and are
less expensive than traditional landscapes because:
- They don't require sub-surface drainage.
- Cultivation, soil replacement or soil
improvement is unnecessary.
- It is far less labour intensive to plant
the forestry tubes.
- The plants are far less expensive.
What others normally do with
traditional exotic plants I can, in many cases, do with indigenous
plants. All it requires is knowledge of the range of species
available, their growth habits and how to get the best out of them.
Alternatively I can create a
representation of natural indigenous plant communities, such as
grassy woodlands and herb rich woodlands. Why not have a little
piece of the unique Australian bush in your own garden? It can
manicured a little to keep it looking neat but still retain its
natural look
You can contribute to preserving our
unique and endangered Australian flora & fauna. In a
largely cleared & eroded landscape your garden could provide
desperately needed habitat for our fauna and act as an 'ark' for our
flora.
With every landscape quote I will
prepare a landscape plan in Microsoft Word format - unfortunately I
have not yet found a landscape design software package that I like
and that contains Australian native plants.
In this document I will insert photos
of your garden over which I superimpose various coloured shapes to
indicate which features and plants go where. For each shape I
indicate the plant species it corresponds to, with a photo and its
likely mature size.
PLEASE NOTE:
- There is only me available to
prepare these plans and if I have a few to do at once then it
may take me a few weeks to prepare yours.
- I tend to work on landscape plans
for an hour or two when I get home.
- I also like to take my time in
preparing them and often try out different layouts etc,
envisaging what they will look like, before selecting what I
believe will be the most appropriate one.
- So please be patient with me.
Why not create a natural looking indigenous
pond that stands apart from all the rest. With such a varied
range if local native water plants and a good range of regional
native fish it can be achieved.
With this pond water trickles out from beneath
the top boulder beside the branch. The small cascade is supported by
a sleeper and the pond pump is in a pit behind it (covered with leaf
litter).
I use a unique double lining system that
creates are far more natural effect. The whole base of the pond is
lined by natural clay or bentonite (refined clay) while only the
inner deep zone is lined by conventional rubberised pond liners.
This system allows the aquatic plants to be
planted in the ground rather than in containers and creates a
wetland around the pond due to slow seepage of water.
The rubber lined inner zone ensures a minimum
water level for any fish and tadpoles as well as preventing
rhizomatous aquatic plants from completely overrunning the pond.
Bentonite is used by the agriculture sector to
seal damns or repair leaks. It is also used in the wine industry as
a fining or clearing agent and will therefore clarify your pond
water.
With careful species selection your pond can
become a self contained wetland ecosystem and largely take care of
itself. Small native fish and fresh water invertebrates will consume
mosquito larvae, native fresh water snails will graze the algae and
water plants will help oxygenate the water and provide shelter.
So called natural ponds, that are fully lined
with rubber or plastic, still end up looking like a glorified
swimming pool with a few plants. And without a muddy bottom and rich
variety of plants they can never develop a complex ecosystem.
Many exotic water plants are also a threat to
the environment if they are released or escape into our water ways
from your pond.
This is a double pond system with water trickling over the pile
of boulders, at the far end, into an upper pond and then trickling
down through a 'stream' into the lower pond.
The area was dead flat so we had to create a downward slope by
piling up some soil at the far end and digging the upper pond in
that.
Any overflow from the pond trickles down a second short 'stream'
into a pit drain off the lower left of this photo.
The pond and surrounding area is yet to be planted by the
children and the coordinating teacher.
My children attend this school and hence much of the work I did
for nothing with quite useful help from the eager children. I also
donated some plants to add to those donated by the Darebin Creek
Management Committee.
One rather pleasing comment from one of the children was "This
frog bog is heaps better than the one at Mernda".
Gold fish are about as unique and interesting
as MUD. They are also a type of Carp and we all know about the
damage that Carp, and other exotic fish, do to our water ways.
Try a few native fish in your pond instead.
They require a little more patience to introduce and establish in
your pond however they are well worth the effort.
Pygmy Perch are supposed to be the most hardy of these.
Here are a few of our native fish
(Permission granted to display
images)
For small ponds - around 15cm in length:
Barred Galaxia
Spotted Galaxia
Flathead Galaxia
Southern Pygmy Perch
Tupong
For large ponds - greater than 20cm in
length:
Australian Bass
Trout Cod
Golden Perch
Spangled or Jewel Perch
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- Lawn mowing
- Pruning
- Weeding
- Mulching
- Watering
- Specialising in maintenance of
indigenous plants and landscapes.
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The integrated management techniques used by a
farmer to control weeds in his pastures or crops is every bit as
relevant to your garden, all be it on a smaller scale.
A professional management plan means the
difference between a garden that is generally over run with weeds
with occasional weed free periods and a garden in which the weeds,
although always present, remain inconspicuous throughout the year.
An integrated management plan must take into
consideration the following:
- The weed seed bank in you garden soil,
providing a continual source of new weeds for decades to come,
and strategies in which to diminish it over time.
- The most optimal times in the year to
eliminate weed seedlings.
- The use of selective herbicides or
application techniques to eliminate the weeds without harming
garden plants.
- Non chemical techniques such as ecological
competition to suppress weed growth.
Click here
to find out more about weed control in general or here
to find out about my weed management services.
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- Transform your small rural
property from a bare & wind swept paddock to haven for local
fauna.
- Why tolerate your bare muddy damn
when you could have a thriving billabong or wetland.
- Revegetation plans prepared
including weed control, erosion control and suitable plants.
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The subjects that I feel most passionate about
are:
- How indigenous plants can be used to create
an attractive garden.
- How to maintain indigenous plants in order
to get the best out of them.
- Exotic and alien Australian native plants
and environmental weeds.
- Applying ecological principals to
gardening.
Click here
to see further details.
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The pages in my online nursery can easily be
adapted to sell any type of item as long as the information on each
of your sale items can be formatted as a series of repeating cells.
The ongoing fees in maintaining your own
selling website, if you use my system, will be as much as your web
hosting service is currently charging you.
If you choose to use one of the official
online shopping cart software systems you will be charged
significant ongoing fees for the use the software, in addition to
the fees charged by your web hosting service. I know because I
looked into this option when I was thinking about setting up my own
online nursery. Not only were the ongoing fees a put off but the
setup and maintenance were complicated, inflexible and frankly not
worth the effort or the cost for such a small enterprise as mine.
I can either build you an entire website,
including selling pages or I can simply setup a series of selling
pages for you to include in your existing website. It will cost you
$50 per web page, so you could
have a basic selling website for a one off cost of a few hundred
dollars. Obviously later additions or modifications to your website
will cost you extra.
System Features & Usage
- It is a simple and inexpensive online order
receiving system ideal for small businesses taking their first
step into online selling.
- Upon receiving an order from a client you
then email them invoice for payment. This invoice can be created
with what ever software you prefer to use and saved on your hard
disk where ever you choose to do so.
- There are major security issues with handling credit
card and bank account numbers etc that I was not prepared to deal in setting up
my online nursery. So I left out the internal payment system
along with the complicated and expensive web security features
that are required. Goods purchased from my website can still
easily be paid for online but my customers do so via the website
of their bank, of Paypal or Paymate rather than via my website.
The most common method of payment for plants ordered from my
online nursery is direct bank deposit.
- There are no tracking or accounting
systems with my system as these sorts of features
add to the complication and expense in setting up and
maintaining the website. All my accounting and order tracking
take place via the business systems I had setup prior to
creating my online nursery.
- It requires that your web hosting service
has Microsoft FrontPage extensions, PHP support and Microsoft
Active Server Pages (ASP) installed.
My website and online nursery consistently
appear on the first page of results in Google for a number of
different search words and phrases. So I can provide you with advice
on how you can achieve similar results in a reasonably short period
of time.
Email
me if you would like to try my system for your online sales..
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This consists of a CD containing
my plant list in Microsoft Excel format with linked photos of each plant.
At present it is restricted to indigenous species however I plan to
expand to contain some Australian native species.
It is a work in progress and will
require a great deal more time to accumulate photos of all or most
of the plant species. However there are currently photos of a good
range of indigenous plants and, at this stage, the fee for this CD
is $6.00 (including $1 postage & $1 CD).
To obtain a copy of the CD post
me a bank cheque or money order and I will post you the CD. Or
alternatively pay me a visit in Epping.
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Go back to
where you came from - SBS
Why are we fixated on such a trivial issue as to
whether asylum seekers arriving by boat are illegal immigrants
or legal asylum seekers. As per usual in Australian politics and
public debate we have both Coalition and Sarah-Hanson Young ideologs
shouting their their particular brands of rhetoric at each
other.
There is far bigger and more
important global sustainability issue that asylum seekers are a
growing symptom of that we should be focusing our attention on -
severe over population and excessive fertility particularly in the developing
world.
Please take a few moments to
watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE
The presenter uses gum balls
and a visual aid to try and get you to comprehend the MASSIVE
scale of this problem and how utterly insignificant western
humanitarian immigration programs are in the face of it and at
huge environmental and social cost to us.
Here is a short transcript of part of it:
Last year, when we(USA) took 1 million
immigrants, these countries (China, India, Asia, Africa, South
America,....) added 80 million more people into the impoverished
population.
And this year congress in bringing in 1 million legal
immigrants. And this year , according to the united nations,
these countries are expected to add another 80 million people.
And next year you can be quite sure that congress will, unless
stopped by the American voters, will bring in another 1 million
immigrants. And these countries will unfortunately be adding
another 80 million people into these impoverished nations.
We could take 5 million immigrants per year, but we would NEVER
get ahead of what is happening in these countries. Not within
this century.
Don't you see that immigration CAN NEVER be an effective or
significant way to deal with human suffering of people in the
world. They have to be helped where they live. 99.9% of them
will never be able to immigrate to a rich country. There is no
hope of that.
QUOTE FROM
MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr, 1966
QUOTE FROM
AUTHOR ISAAC ASIMOV
Source: http://www.wesjones.com/asimov.htm
MOYERS: Why did you say that
the price of survival is the equality of women?
ASIMOV: Because if women are allowed to enter into all facets of
the human condition, if they can enter business, if they can
enter religion, science, government on an equal basis with men,
they will be so busy they won't feel it necessary to have a
great many children. As long as you have women under conditions
where they don't feel any sense of value or self-worth except as
mothers, they'll have a lot of children because that's the only
way they can prove they're worth something. In general, if you
look through the world, the lower the status of women, the
higher the birth rate, and the higher the birth rate, the lower
the status of women. If you could raise the status of women, I
am certain the birth rate would fall drastically through the
choice of the women themselves. We're always saying that there's
no fulfillment like having children, but I notice mostly it's
men who say that. You know, men get along without giving birth
to children. They do that by finding other things to do. If
women could find other things to do, too, they would have fewer
children.
MOYERS: But once again, you are in conflict
with a biblical imperative, "Be fruitful and multiply."
ASIMOV: Right. But God said that when Adam and Eve were the only
two people in the world. He said, "Be fruitful and multiply and
replenish the earth." The earth was replenished long ago. That's
one of the problems of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists take a
statement that made sense at the time it was made, and because
they refuse to consider that the statement may not be an
absolute, eternal truth, they continue following it under
conditions where to do so is deadly.
Moyers: What happens to
the idea of the dignity of the human species if population
growth continues at its present rate?
Asimov: It will be
completely destroyed. I will use what I call my bathroom
metaphor. Two people live in an apartment and there are two
bathrooms, then both have the freedom of the bathroom. You can
go to the bathroom anytime you want, and stay as long as you
want, for whatever you need. Everyone believes in the freedom of
the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But
if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no
matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the
bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for
each person, you have to bang at the door, "Aren't you through
yet?" and so on.
The same way democracy
cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it.
Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and
more people into the world, the value of life not only declines,
it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more
people there are the less one individual matters.
My Country by Dorothea
Mackellar - 1885-1968, written in 1904
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
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