The Advantge of Native Grasses

Hi Alex. Somehow I managed to delete my response & haven't been able to get it back in spite of having saved a copy. So I'll have to start again another day. Please be patient! Next time I'll type my response in a Word document so that, hopefully, I'll be able to retrieve it if I accidentally press on the keys that lead to disaster.

Here we go, Alex.

First of all, I commend you on your move to establish an indigenous garden. Not just natives but indigenous natives. There are so many advantages in doing this.

If you’re fortunate enough to have remnant patches of native grasses in your neighbourhood then what you could do is obtain any necessary authority to collect seed from them (seed collection time is coming up soon as many native grasses are in flower at present) then sow the seed in the area which was once your lawn. (More of this later). The advantage of using seed from locally growing grasses is that you preserve the genetic integrity of the grasses that are already growing near you. The disadvantage might be that if the native grass remnants are small you might be better importing seed from elsewhere to strengthen the genetic diversity & therefore the survivability of the grasses you grow.

If you don’t have remnant native grasses growing locally then you’ll need to import either the seed or tube stock from elsewhere. Your nearest native nursery may be able to help either way but be wary that the purpose of the nursery is to make money, not necessarily provide you with the appropriate species for your location. Your council may have an environmental officer who can help with indigenous species selection. Your council may even have a native nursery which can provide you with a range of indigenous grasses & other plants. Landcare groups can also be useful sources of information & help.

Native Seeds (www.nativeseeds.com.au)  is a business which produces native seeds. I have their book Australian Native Grasses which you can probably download or obtain via their website. A species which they promote as a lawn grass is Weeping Rice Grass Microlaena stipoides which is indigenous to at least parts of the Sydney area. Growing this might enable you to have your cake & eat it too as it tolerates mowing.  

Another native grass which is local to at least parts of Sydney is Kangaroo Grass Themeda triandra. I mention this one for several reasons: it’s rather ornamental with a brown-orange appearance in summer, it provides great habitat for small critters & nesting material for birds, it requires no watering & it regenerates well.

Now to the hard yakka of being a yard hacker.

If you want relatively speedy results with the least work then I suggest you make your lawn nice & lush in summer then spray it in early autumn with herbicide (obeying all the directions on the container, of course), wait about 4 weeks for it to die off then after the first good rain, either rough up the soil with a rake, broadcast your native grass seed onto the bare earth, then tamp the earth; or plant your tube stock. In a normal year you shouldn’t need to do too much watering, if any. Normal conditions should give you a hardy crop. However, given the vagaries of the Australian climate plus climate change you may need to help the seeds germinate & survive by watering occasionally.

Weed management is the most arduous part of grass establishment. I’ve successfully used the minimum disturbance approach to bush regeneration on significant parts of my property & recommend Joan Bradley’s book Bringing Back the Bush as an informative, inspiring read. The approach involves selecting the areas of your former lawn area with the highest quality native grasses, hand weeding among the grasses where necessary & carefully spraying more intense weed infestations about two metres out from the edges of the best quality areas. This method provides space for native grasses to spread naturally into when they come into seed. Mind you, you might find your attempts at broadcasting seed or planting tube stock are so successful that you don’t need to do much weeding at all! And, of course, you can use the minimum disturbance approach with most, if not all Australian natives.

In my case living on acreage has meant that there have been remnant native grass seeds in the soil waiting for stock removal to enable them to germinate & survive. So, I have no stock & nice areas of native grasses which are gradually taking over from the more water-hungry, mostly annual northern hemisphere grasses introduced by previous owners.

Around our house I’ve mowed & sprayed the introduced grasses each year for bushfire prevention purposes. In parts this has enabled native grasses to invade but they, too, are mown, often before they produce seed. However, much of this work is being undone, I think, by the invasion of Cape Weed which is so difficult to control. I’m keenly waiting for the Cape Weed to die out to see if the native grasses then take over but I guess we’ll need a good early summer rain for their seeds to germinate & there’s little likelihood of this given the Bureau of Meteorology forecast.

Each person’s situation is different & what suits one locality may not suit another. Other Birds in Backyarders may have other ideas & experiences about establishing indigenous native grasses & it’d be great to hear from them.

Good luck with your efforts, Alex. I’m confident you’ll find it an intriguing project.

I forgot to mention, Alex: don't sell your lawn mower. Use it to mow & collect your native grasses when they set seed then broadcast the seed into areas where you want more native grasses to grow. There might even be places in your neighborhood where you could broadcast the seed. 

You're most welcome, Alex.

I should mention that the Cape Weed is now dying out & local Wallaby Grass species Austrodanthonia spp. are appearing in places. Some have even set seed already. Sadly, tho', there's plenty of small, fluffy Cape Weed seeds around. A challenge for next year!