GARDENS: go native for a waterwise garden
Australian native plants are hardy, practical and beautiful. They’re also perfect for a flourishing garden through drought, hail, rain and shine.
With water restrictions affecting many of our gardens, a switch to natives – which have evolved through droughts, pests and disease – makes sense. But there are a few maintenance myths you’ll need to bust first in order to get the best out of your Australian native garden. In their new book, The Waterwise Australian Native Garden, Angus Stewart and AB Bishop reveal the tricks to blooming native success.
Maintenance myth 1: NATIVE PLANTS DON’T NEED WATER
It’s true Australian native plants have evolved to withstand long dry spells and, once established, many can survive quite happily without any additional water. However, most native plants you purchase will have been grown in wholesale nurseries, where daily watering occurs. Once planted in your garden, they need to be gradually weaned off this constant water supply.
To ensure planting success, plunge the whole pot into a bucket of water
to fully saturate the root ball before it goes into the ground. Keep the plant moist for the first month after planting, and then gradually reduce the amount of water it is given.
The second point is that there is a difference between a plant that is surviving and one that is thriving. While the majority of Australian plants survive very well without additional water, they may not thrive during a prolonged dry spell. In the absence of abundant soil moisture, the plant will often shut down and reduce its flowering and growth – but the important thing to remember is that this will help it survive to flower another day.
Maintenance myth 2: NATIVE PLANTS DON’T NEED FERTILIZER
Australia is an ancient continent, with some of the oldest soils in the world. Over millions of years many soils have had almost all the nutrients leeched away, to the point where they are now some of the most impoverished soils in the world. The native plants that have evolved in these poor soils have had to be come incredibly efficient attracting the nutrients – especially phosphorus – that are present in the soil at low levels. Most grevilleas, hakeas and wattles (Acacia species) fall into this category.
This means that many Australian plants can survive and grow reasonably well in very infertile soils. However, to reach their full flowering potential, there are a number of native plants that benefit from feeding at the appropriate time and with the right fertilizer. While not every native plant is sensitive to extra phosphorus, a good general rule of thumb is to feed your Australian plants with low-phosphorus ‘native plant foods’. If you feed flowering shrubs such as boronias, philothecas, tea-trees (Leptospermum species) and bottlebrushes (Callistemon species) after they have finished flowering and you have trimmed them back, this will stimulate lots of new vegetative growth that will then produce the framework for the next flowering.
Maintenance myth 3: YOU SHOULDN’T PRUNE NATIVE PLANTS
If you want your native plants – particularly shrubby plants such as grevilleas and tea-trees and bottlebrushes – to look as good as your roses and camellias, they need to be pruned regularly. Start pruning native perennials and shrubs when they are young. Simply tip prune them by pinching out the tender growing tips between your finger and thumbs every couple of months for the first two years after planting, and you will be rewarded with a compact plant that bears a multitude of flowers. Once your native plant is established, simply trim it back behind the spent flowers right after the plant has finished blooming.
Maintenance myth 4: NATIVE PLANTS ARE SHORT-LIVED
Certain plants are known for having short life spans. Wattles, hop bushes (Dodonaea species) and various genera of native peas colonise the soil after a disturbance such as a bushfire. They then grow very quickly and mature within a few years, after which they usually start to decline rapidly before giving away their spot to the slower-growing species around them. The trick in the garden is to research the plant’s natural life span and work around that, so that you do not end up with unplanned and unwelcome gaps in the garden when a plant dies of ‘natural causes’.
There are also native annuals, such as most everlasting daises (Xerochyrsum species), as well as short-lived perennials, such as flannel flowers (Actinotus species) and many fan-flowers (Scaevola species),
|that look their best for only a couple of years, after which they can become a bit ragged. In general, these types of plants are easy to propagate from seeds or soft tip cuttings, and they should be replaced once they are past their best.
Mulches can be used to replace expanses of lawn to make gardens more water efficient.