One of the great pleasures I get from visiting gardens is the diversity of plants that I see and how they have been successfully put together. While it seems to disturb some folk, I never cease to be impressed by the creativeness of garden lovers creations. I get a great kick out of seeing good gardens whether they are totally native or exotic or mixed. I recommend that Sydney folk visit 'Waterfall Cottage' which is open this weekend and tends to be open about four times a year. It is mainly native with a smattering of well considered exotics.

My own two and a half acre garden is dominated by natives but it is tainted by the odd exotic. I have carefully chosen the exotics for a purpose and I personally feel it works well.

One aspect of gardens that does sadden me is the tendancy for some to grow formal gardens. Whether they are contain natives or exotics, formal gardens reveal the fear that homo sapiens have with the natural world.

It is also frustrating to see plants in an inappropriate situation. Potential weed species (including native plants) bother me as well as water thirsty plants struggling in a dry climate garden.

Otherwise long live tolerance and diversity!!

I agree that the totally formal approach for the home garden is ridiculous, but there is a degree to which the shape of many of our blocks have enforced a sort of semi-formal garden at the front of a large number of home owners. Predominately straight lines, neatly clipped hedges and acres of manicured lawn seem to be the norm for much of Oz, and the unspoken pressure to conform is very evident, at least in our front gardens. My beds may have more curves than those around me, but its only recently that I plucked up the courage to start hacking into the lawn and create new beds in previously 'uncharted' territory. Its a wonderfully liberating feeliing :)

For all my trailblazing (!) ways, I'm still trying to avoid too great a clash of cultures in the front garden - no Gymea Lilies or towering gums. As for the plants, they seem happy together, despite their only connection being a great track record ar this latiitude. Locals often dismiss plants such as Plumeria and Murraya as far too 'common' , but they seem to coexist happily with native rainforest species, so who am I to break with tradition ?

Cheers,

Artie

Large stands of camphor laurel are all over the place, (not on my land ) huge hedges of privet along the roadside (council land). The birds eat the seeds from both these weeds and deposit them all over the place, where new plants will emmerge.

I have observed new "weeds" growing in my bush, such as Liquid ambers, Jackarandas, passionfruit vines, thats to go with the already exploding Japanese honeysuckle.

All these plants are garden escapes, exotics, but they are displacing native plants in my 6 acres.

Murraya is another potential threat, with its berries that the birds like to eat.

Yes, I think diversity is here to stay, but we all need to think very carefully about what we plant in our gardens.

Good topic Robert.

We have some terrestrial orchids growing in our backyard. We're probably the only place in the suburb with them. But they use up valuable garden real-estate that we'd rather use to grow veggies. Should we keep them?

We have very few members on this forum and if we won't be the "champions" for native plants, who will? We need to be pursuading the great unwashed about their desirability, so that some of their "diversity" can survive the onslaught of the exotics.

Cheers,
Frank.

But the idea that every exotic plant is a weed will never catch on as it is just not true. If we make statements like that we are just not going to seem credible when making a case against the real escapees that are now causing serious damage. We also lose credibility if we use that arguement to push only natives.

As I said in my original post many native plants are becoming damaging weeds. Most of us here already know there are hundreds of exotic weed species as well as those old favourites such as Privet and Camphor Laurel. Just look at the declared weed species in any shire/council area in Australia. But there are equally lots of exotics that do not indicate weed potential. Realistically no authority/government is going to ban all exotic plants.

Some of the exotics I am growing are sterile forms of Euphorbia, Miscanthus, as well as plants like Red Hot pokers for the Honey-eaters, Salvias, and Megaskapasma that seem to be handling the dry quite well.

An interesting native plant that I am having trouble with right now is Cyathea. It is now coming up everywhere!

Frank I reckon there are thousands of "quiet gardeners" out there that do not frequent web pages like this, happily growing native plants. We may not like their plant selection but they do like to get their hands in the dirt and they do like to plant the odd native.

On this forum we are winning extremely few converts as we tend to preach to the converted. Some insist on keeping stictly to the "correct path" while others like myself tend to stray a bit. I wish there was a way of generating enthusiastic discussion about native plants that encouraged more contributors and was not so self-righteous.

As I said in my first post on this subject: "Out of millions of gardeners in Australia the amount of contributors this forum on native plants is sadly very small." I wish it was not so.

Cadagi (Eucalyptus Torelliana)
several species of Acacia
Box Honeysuckle
Passionfruit vine

These are all sold at various nurseries throughout Rocky, but nursery owners claim that they have sterile stock which wont cause any problems. I'll hand that one over to the forum for further dicsussion.

Cheers,

Artie

That way their right to grow and sell their favourite exotic plants would not impinge on my right, and that of future generations, to enjoy our diverse range of indigenous plants (and animals that rely on them) in the wild.

What particularly enrages me is those people who simply don't care about my right or simply bury their head in the sand after the environmental effects of their chosen non-sterile exotic plants are explained to them. As long as they can grow or sell what ever they damn well please then to hell with every one else.

I think it is high time that ecology, with a environmental weed component, was a compulsory subject in secondary school as with English.

Ecology should also be a compulsory component in the training of landscapers, landscape architects and horticulturalists. Perhaps if some of these people did some work experience in a bush crew for several months, as part of their training, they would be some what more understanding of people like myself.

Ecology has been taught in landscape courses for years. I myself remember ecology, conservation and rehabilitation as major subjects over twelve years ago at Ryde TAFE in the four year Diploma in Landscape Design course. These subjects now form major areas of study in most of the university landscape degree courses that I am aware of.

There has been an increasing interest in environmental horticulture for a long while. So much so, that for quite a few years there have been all sorts of environmental horticultural/conservation degree courses available.

Willows are apparently much better at filtering creek water than any australian species.

I want a 30 second sound bite that explains why we should protect diversity and attempt to control weeds.

Willows make dirty water clean again, unlike native species. So why do we want to get rid of them?

This page will answer all your questions:
http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/publications/salix.html

(c.v. dingos, boabs, pittosporum undulatum etc)

My point is that until we can give a good reason for why we believe what we do, we are as bad as the people we are criticising.

Ok, my take on it is this : biodiversity is about maintaining a balance between different plants (and animals, insects etc). Remove one species from an ecosystem and you remove the food source/habitat of another : this has a domino effect and the net result is a lifeless desert where even the weeds cant survive (or a choked river system, or ...). If you listen to David Attenborough tell it, all life on earth depends on the dung beetle - a humbling thought indeed.

OK, many of our species are more adapatable than we give them credit for, and weeds arent the only environmental issue facing the bush (surely salinity is a bigger problem ?), but its not a rosy picture. Yes, I should be donating some of my free time to LandCare, but how about getting some of our welfare recipients out in the bush ?

Sincerely,

Alan Jones
C/O 2UE

Arty has at least tried to answer it, the other posts are all just stepping around the question.

Take my example. We have orchids growing in the lawn at our house. They are taking up valuable veggie space, which we might use to grow our own veggies; offseting vast amounts of CO2 emissions, truck driver deaths, land clearing, loss of veggie diversity etc. Or I could leave them be, in the knowledge that I personally wasn't responsible for the death of the last indigenous P pedunculata in the surrounding 5 km. They might die in 5 years anyway in a drought or something.

Does life on Earth depend on the humble maroonhood?

Willows may effectively filter water and improve the water quality in the short term. However if uncontrolled then in the long term they will eventually stop water flow leading to reduction in water quality through stagnation. Like many weedy species they do not form an acceptable equilibrium with the ecosystem.

And the issue of willows as to be viewed in the context of the myriad of other ways that humans are interefering with a destroying local ecosystems.

No doubt environmental weeds have arrived and continue to arrive in Australia without intervention by humans. However that may amount to one outbreak every thousand years or so. At this rate the effected ecosystems have ample time to assimilate the changes brought about by the new arrival before the next outbreak.

With human intervention new environmental weeds are ariving at a rate of many hundreds per century. Local ecosystems are simply unable to assimilate the resulting changes and reduction in biodiversity is the result.

If willows were the only environmental weed we had to deal with then perhaps we could afford to learn to live with them. However they are the tip if the ice berg.

Maybe I was not clear enough, but your interpretation of what I said is not what I meant. I said:

"When all the exotics that have weed potential take over the environment..."

That does not mean that I believe all exotics have weed potential. It means that those particular exotics which do have weed potential are the problem.

I don't believe "...the idea that every exotic plant is a weed".

However, as others have said, it appears that not enough (if any) care is taken by those who stand to gain from importing exotics in checking weed potential (and I'm not confident AQIS has the resources to do this properly either), and in the final analysis, while we might make a reasonable judgement about it, I don't believe that we can be sure anyway whether a new exotic will or won't become a terrible weed.

As others have also said, some Australian natives also have weed potential when planted outside their natural range, and I am certainly not denying that. But my guess is that Australian natives that have become weeds in Australia outside their natural range are probably fewer in number and less likely to be a significant problem than exotic weeds, because it is more likely that there are related plant species in other Australian environments that already have their own pests and diseases to control them. Maybe someone with more knowledge can confirm or deny that?

Maybe landscapers and nursery people in their courses learn more about ecology and the environment these days, but that does not seem to translate to what they actually sell. And the buyers generally are often ignorant of their poor choices. And they don't even have to buy the weed species. In this district there are any number of camphor laurels, Chinese elm, Jacaranda, and privet volunteering, and because many people see them growing in their back yards and think they might be pretty plants, not knowing their weed potential (or if they know, not caring), then the cycle is just self-perpetuating. It is just depressing if you think about it too much.

Frank

I believe they do. (Forget the whales. Let's hear it for the nematodes!) You'll have to make your own ethical decisions here.
A fourth question is whether some of us should accept responsibility for respecting the values of others, in cases where our decisions could have results that others find painful. Yes, there could well be species which you regard as relatively worthless, but if other people value them, do you have the right to make a decision which could eventually eliminate them? Could this be a reason not to plant willows? Do we need them(or our pet cats, or our other pet introduced plants) so badly that we are prepared to impose them despite the cherished values of others?
I wish you some happy hours meditating the finer points of ethics. Thanks for the stimulus!
Trish

Realistically I cannot see government legislation being introduced that is going to ban every introduced plant species in Australia. It is just not going to happen. As I also said; "the idea that every exotic plant is a weed will never catch on as it is just not true. If we make statements like that we are just not going to seem credible when making a case against the real escapees that are now causing serious damage."

There are hundreds of exotic weeds species that are causing damage to our bushland all over Australia. We all know this for goodness sake!!! Whenever the argument against exotics comes up on this forum you can bet more than one contributor to the discussion is going to use as examples, the old favourites. I said in my second post "Most of us here already know there are hundreds of exotic weed species as well as those old favourites such as Privet and Camphor Laurel. Just look at the declared weed species in any shire/council area in Australia. But there are equally lots of exotics that do not indicate weed potential. Realistically no authority/government is going to ban all exotic plants." My goodness, I am surprised no one mentioned Lantana!!

I was hoping the "old crusty" native enthusiasts would move on so the discussion could be advanced to a more pragmatic and realistic level; i.e. how can we as native plant enthusiasts be more accepting of natives with selected exotics in our domestic GARDENS (not bushland!!!)? It appears most cannot.

While there are many hardliners on this forum who want 100% native plants in every garden it is just not going to happen. (I've said that before too) It is acknowledged that increasing numbers of gardeners, government bodies and landscapers are becoming more and more aware of the danger of exotic weeds in our natural bushland. Also just look at the substantial growth of bush regeneration groups all over the country. I am not aware of any contributor here being in favour of planting potential weed species. So can we move on please?

The most popular forums on GardenWeb appear to be Roses in OZ and Cornucopia. Both are exotic plant growers but we cannot hope to be as popular as them unless we are less pig headed and intolerant. Declaring every exotic as endangering the purity of our environment will continue to be regarded with ridicule. I do not grow roses but I can appreciate them in other gardens.

I said twice in my postings "Out of millions of gardeners in Australia the amount of contributors to this forum on native plants is sadly very small." I was trying to find a way to improve the situation but I can see from the above contributions it is not going to happen.

Well I've moved completely in the other direction (that we should accept what we have unconditionally and make no specific effort to 'solve' the weed problem), and you can't accept that, so we're even ;)

I certainly do not understand the stuff about being even. Surely it is possible to have a discussion without having to get even?

The quote of mine you have selected was written without bitterness or any intention of point scoring. I was trying to articulate the line that I had started this post. This "old crusty" native enthusiast is now quite confused.

Im preaching to the converted but thats my $1.10 worth (GST INC)
wazcrazy

"At least by growing natives (whether exclusively, or just by growing a few)- we are refusing to take part in the wholesale conversion of our landscape to something that could be anywhere in the world."

While they can be nice plants, camellias and azaleas seem to be yawningly common around Toowoomba. We inherited some of both when we moved to our current property. The camellias are still there as backdrops; screens; because they flower in winter; don't need watering; require no care; are not weed trees (no seed); and because they can fit in well with native rainforest plants. The only reason the azaleas are still there is that my wife wants to keep them, but they need too much looking after to keep in good condition and are not suited to our alkaline soil and drying climate. They also look awful when not in flower unless you are prepared to use poison on them to kill the pests. Their flowering has been very poor for a couple of years because of the drought and so they have had absolutely nothing to recommend them to me.

Cheers,
Frank

yes. usually unoriginal, therefore a waste of resources including human work/manhours. imo :-)

it amazes me that ppl who've been gardening for a decade or more continue maintaining their self-enforced drudgery.

One can certainly have a monotony in exotic gardens.

Frank,
I reckon that the drought and the restrictive use of water still affecting so many gardens, are going to see plants like azaleas being just difficult to grow. Lots of them karked it last over summer.

I notice that the perennial Salvias (not the common bedding Salvias) are becoming popular as they are more drought hardy. I must admit that even though I grow quite a few exotics with my natives, I gave up on Camelias and Azaleas long long ago.