What’s Flowering Now?

End of Winter and early Spring is a time for Wattles! Lots of Wattles!

It’s a great time to learn some new plant ID skills.  Acacias are very easily identifyable when in flower, which makes them a great place to start if you want to learn some botany.

If you are in Victoria, the book “Native Trees and Shrubs of South-Eastern Australia” by Leon Costermans has a great key for this genus.

It is also a great time to see Hardenbergias – our “native wisterias”.  This is an amazingly ornamental plant and if you have a fence or trellice you should give them a go as they are easily available from Garden Centres (although we recommend a specialist indigenous nursery as these will draw from the gene pool of your local area).

Also in flower is Pimelea humilis (Common Rice Flower), Drosera peltata (Pale Sundew), Chrisocephalum apiculatum (Common Everlasting), Wurmbea dioica (Common Early Nancy) and if you are really lucky, you might even find a Pterostylis sp (Greenhood Orchid)! 

In the next couple of months, many more plants will start to flower.  October and November are the best time of the year to see wildflowers, so charge up your camera and get out there!  

 

It’s nearly spring!

The temperature is warming up and the days are getting longer.  Now is the best time of the year to go looking for wildflowers in your local conservation reserve – your Council should be able to point you on the right direction, if you don’t know where those are! 

Keep in mind that the most beautiful plants of our grasslands are only little, so have a good look down and keep your eyes opened – you will be surprised at how much beauty there is if you work on a smaller scale!

 

 

Arthropodium and the Lime Tree

Confession time

I use to be a gardening purist, indigenous plants out the front yard, food plants out the back ….and never the two shall meet.

Well, that all changed when I saw some beautiful Arthropodium minus (Small Vanilla-lily) at my favourite indigenous nursery – pot bound, dying back and ready for the bin. I took the little dying beauties home and sat out the front yard contemplating where to put them. Then dilemma struck! I needed full sun and EVERYWHERE suitable in my front yard was already occupied.

I worried and fretted looking at these sick little Arthopodium’s –  had I just taken them home to their doom, to languish until an untimely death from my lack of ability to water pots?

I needed a cup of Castlemaine Coffee to help reassess the situation.

Appropriately caffeinated, I questioned my ideology, if there was nowhere in front yard, why not the backyard?

My one year old permaculture style garden had just begun to take shape – a few little Arthropodium’s would not hurt the mix. I planted them in a semi-circle under my Lime tree and both just took off. The little Arthropodium’s have survived two and a half years and so far flowered four times (early spring and again in late summer, their leaves are currently up for year three) and I got my first crop of six juicy Limes this year.

Now I have a a front yard and back yard full of impromptu trials, mixing up indigenous plants and food plants.

So far here are some of my successful combinations:

• Strawberries with a border of Themeda triandra(Kangaroo Grass)
• Chrysocephalum semipapposum and Plum
• Lemon Tree with a ring of Dianella admixta (Maroon-anther Flax-lily)
• Plum tree with Chrysocephalum semipapposum (Clustered Everlasting)
• Rosemary hedge with an overstorey of Acacia implexa (Lightwood)
• Chilies, Carrots and Bulbine sp. (Bulbine Lily)
• Chestnut tree with a border of Rhodanthe anthemoides (Chamomile Sunray)

So why don’t you give it ago? Plant some indigenous wildflowers with your food plants or food plants with your natives, maybe we can create mini-ecosystems in our gardens that are beneficial to both us (yum) and our local flora and fauna.

Acacia and Rosemary

Chrysocephalum semipapposum and Plum

P.S the best case would be indigenous food plants – but that’s another post…..

Live in Melbourne’s Plains? Plant a grassland!

I’ve talked to many ecologists about this and they all seem to tell me the same thing:  maintaining a small piece of the original Melbourne Grassland in an urban context is very, very costly and difficult.  Creating one from scratch is just impossible!

WRONG!

With less than $15, I’ve managed to turn this 1x1m corner of my garden into what it was before it had to make way for my house.

It has been 5 months since I’ve planted it and the only maintenance I’ve done was pulling out one dandelion plant.

So, how is it done?

Easy!

I scraped an area and brought it back to bare ground.  I covered it some native grass hay (I bought a bale from Flora Victoria, for $5) and watched the Wallaby Grass pop up.  I planted some tubestock (daisies, Murnong, Blue Devil, all at $2 per tube) and some Bulbine Lily I got from a friend.

It took less than a month before it looked like a true grassland. It’s so simple, anyone can and should do it!

Wildflowers are beautiful!

I like how its looking at you going, so you wanna build a house on me do you? Well do you, PUNK!