Australian Native Plants Society (Australia)
Garden Design Stories
My small native courtyard
As a result of building works, I needed to redesign my small native courtyard in Sydney’s northern suburbs. The courtyard is located between the front of my house and a pitched…
View storyCreating a ‘wallum’ garden
I wanted to try my hand at creating a ‘wallum’ garden, a coastal heathland garden which has incredible diversity. Here’s how we went about it. Wallum ecosystems are coastal heathlands…
View storyDesign for climate change
Given the way the climate is headed, we should consider how to design our native gardens for climate change. I live and garden on a north facing hillside south-east of…
View storyMy front courtyard garden
It’s always useful to critique one’s own garden from a design perspectiveand here I have assessed my own front courtyard garden. Site conditions and analysis Location and aspect are both…
View storyBonsai native plants
Have you ever wanted to bonsai native plants? Here is an outline of what bonsai culture is, what plants work and some resources to draw on. What does bonsai culture…
View storyOne stop pharmacy in the forest!
Many of our native species have excellent medicinal qualities. One such plant is Alstonia scholaris, which is a one stop pharmacy in the forest. Alstonia scholaris in situ I saw…
View storyA living sculpture for the cockatoos
We created a living botanic sculpture, in the form of a grove of allocasuarinas, for the black cockatoos. Planting the living scupture 20 years ago We planted 56 Allocasuarina torulosa…
View storyEphemeral arid plants of NSW
The ephemeral arid and semi-arid plants of NSW demonstrate some extraordinary adaptations to climate, soils and microclimate! With an increasingly variable and warming climate, it’s worth understanding which plants might cope…
View story‘Spirit of the Garden’, a book
Here is a beautiful and emotive book, published several years ago, called the Spirit of the Garden, by Trisha Dixon. ‘Gardens can be formal or wild, serene or ostentatious, native…
View storyDiversity AND uniformity
As I contemplate my 20 year old native garden, I realise that it is now a mix of both diversity AND uniformity. However, there is a strong bias towards allowing…
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