Cheers,

Artie

I'm gradually converting my garden to natives but sometimes I get frustrated because of the lack of information available to the average gardener. Why is this so? Why is there not more widespread knowledge about natives? I'm sure that even a lot of non-gardeners could tell you a lot about roses but I can't find anyone (locally) who can tell me whether there's a medium height melaleuca I can grow in my lousy clay soil that will cope with a strong SW wind and the roots from the neigbour's pittosporums.

Sorry, I probably sound like a mad woman (put it down to the local nurserywoman who not once but TWICE tried to sell me a plant that she confidently assured me was 'the oz native violet' [it wasn't]). The more information that gets to the general public the better IMHO.

regards
Reilly (anyone have any suggestions on the melaleuca BTW?)

pos02
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You need to keep in mind that some WA native plants, e.g. Sollya heterophylla or Native Bluebell Creeper, are environmental weeds in Victoria. Cootamundra Wattle from NSW is another example of an Australian native environmental weed.
If you stick to local native plants you really can't do any harm to your local environment.

I think we are quite well off for printed info in Rocky; the SGAP branch has published a list of 500 plants from the Fitzroy Basin and their best uses, and recently Livingstone Shire at Yeppoon has put out a booklet listing suitable local plants. Calliope Landcare printed an excellent booklet with colour pix several years; probably difficult to find now. In short, you could find yourself better educated than the typical nursery staff on indigenous spp.

Mackay SGAP has an active propagation group and does a roaring trade once a year selling local tubestock along with a descriptive handout. They also sell at their monthly meetings tho' I doubt many non-members would go. Councils' vegetation/ Bushcare officers *should* be able to direct people to sources of indigenous plants, one would hope.

There is lots of local info about natives including indigenous, although it is not always available at general nurseries.
See is there are any Australian Plant Society (APS) or landcare groups in your area.
Look for landcare hgroups on the DSE website http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/dse/index.htm

and APS groups on the APS - Victoria website

And inside there's a whole section on natives.

I should note that I only read the native sections for information on the ones you can eat, but hey, it's all good :)

The Organic Gardening magazine put out by Gardening Australia is also getting interested in natives - tending to focus on the bushfoods aspect of things, which is excellent.

... or because they found a new, exotic taste they'd not had before! Just because something is adapted for a particular ecosystem doesn't mean it can't adapt to a similar one - particularly if it happens to be a more viable version of the one they're already used to.

Hence parrots learning _very_ quickly about the liquid-rich, sugary European fruits - so much nicer and easier than the hard work inherent in Australia's liquid-conservative fuits and flowers. Or wombats learning that potatoes are so much worthier of effort than yam daisy roots - because potatoes are larger, juicier, and have more nutrients for them. And possibly taste better to a wombat :)

And why some exotics take off and take over - but others just snuff it. And why, of course, the same happens when Australian plants are taken overseas - our little plants are major weeds in other locations.

We completely altered the balance when we started clearing land, shooting animals and grazing livestock, and we did it in a way that no amount of aboriginal burning had done for thousands of years. By introducing artifical food into the system, we completely skewed the balance in favour of certain species, and to the detriment of others. Evolution ? Only if Darwins cycles could be measured in decades ...

Native species will probably never regain the balance they enjoyed prior to the arrival of white civilisation, but surely we can give them a fighting chance. End of sermon :)

Of course, it's hardly the ideal situation ... but then, a continent like Australia attempting to support 20million people, or a planet like Earth attempting to support 6 billion people, are also hardly ideal situations. We can just keep our eyes focussed on the ideal and do our best to work toward them ...