Like folks in other threads, I too have the only yard in my neighborhood that is predominately native. I'm in an inner Melbourne suburb (Carnegie) with small to medium back yard, and am surrounded by English or Mediterranean style gardens.
When we moved in the back yard was hydrangeas and grass. The front yard was roses and grass. I didn't mind the grass so much but my wife absolutely loathed roses and hydrangeas. So out they went. Eventually, the grass went too. I don't miss the mowing, I assure you.
And natives replaced it all. Rather random choices of natives, no real plan, but a broad variety including Grevillia, Bottlebrush, Kangaroo Paw, and others.
The bird population when we moved in was Indian Mynas, Peaceful Doves, and an occasional Magpie begging for a handout. The Indian Mynas were particularly nasty, noisy, aggressive little buggers.
The Mynas are now gone. Period. I literally haven't seen one in my yard for years. The Doves have mostly moved down the road.
I believe that the single most important plant that encouraged that turnaround was a flowering gum (pretty sure mine is Eucalyptus leucoxylon) which now stands around 30 meters high. It seems to provide a supermarket for Wattlebirds and Currawongs, Lorikeets, Rozellas, and other parrots.
I am absolutely convinced that the Wattlebirds drove the Mynas away.
We also get the Common Blackbird scrounging around in the woodchip now, but I don't begrudge them too much. They are a decided improvement over those blasted Mynas.
We even had a fruit bat hanging around for awhile. He seemed to like the grape vine and the apricots but they are gone now, and so is the fruit bat. Plenty of possums though, and they seem to have plenty to do outside, haven't had a problem with them trying to get into the house for years.
Cheers everyone.
Hi Geococcyx, I agree about the flowering Gum we should all have one,I put one in to attract the Honeyeaters and it worked lovely.
Cheers
John
Great stuff - I am sure you are right about the Wattlebirds. They even chase our Magpies, who luckily don't take any nonsense from them! It is amazing what will come into your yard, especially if your under-story is of different heights for the smaller birds to hide. Native bush is fantastic, but I have been interested to note this year that my Fuschias have been a big hit with the NH Honey-eaters.
I agree too about the gums, we have a variety in the front and next door gardens and they are full of lorikeets, honey eaters, currawong,noisy miners and today even the pale headed rosellas. They love them.
Cheers
Birdie
Sunshine Coast Queensland
I find it's really exciting when the water-guzzling, European-style garden is extinguised & the native garden takes its place with all its attendant wildlife. For me a garden is so much more than just plants.
I was interested in your comment about the fuscias, Lyn. Before we got rid of ours I ensured that we had plenty of honeyeater-attracting native plants as our fuscia was a good food source for the honeyeaters. There's a garden at Woodside which features fuscias big time & that attracts eastern spinebills like nobody's business.
We have several Allyogynes & for the first time I noticed a New Holland honeyeater feeding from a flower a couple of days ago. Has anyone else noticed honeyeaters feeding on Allyogyne flowers?
Hi Woko.
I know the garden at Woodside well.
At the moment I have two hanging baskets of Kalanchoe manginii
under our verandah. The NH Honeyeaters just won't leave them alone, feasting on the flowers every day. I even saw them at my Zygocactus flowers.
They are one of my favourite birds - so gregarious and amusing to watch.
A mixture of native flora and other types of flowers obviously gives them a bit of variety!
One of the problems caused by native bird-attractive exotics is that they take the birds away from one of their main roles in the environment, namely, pollinating native plants. This means that regeneration of native flora is inhibited.
Similarly, well-intended folk who put out sugar-laced water to attract native birds are taking the birds away from their pollination & native seed spreading roles.
we are getting more and more f....spammers!!
M-L
We have masses of large flowering gums and native bushes in our yard and we are surrounded by bush full of a large variety of native trees. The bird life is abundant and I feel very blessed.
We live in a small subdivision of acreages that is 4km from the nearest town. We recently had English people buy the block up the road and build a house. They began the task of trying to turn their Aussie bush block into an old English garden. It was a disaster. Thank goodness they have moved on and a family of bird lovers have moved in and started rejuvenating the garden back to it's Aussie bush glory.
I bet your heart sank when that English garden was developed & soared when the new neighbours began their bush restoration.
The tragedy of "developing" native bush is that it can never be restored to its original state. There are so many aspects to the bush. Apart from trees & shrubs there are lilies, orchids, creepers, climbers, ground covers, daisies, fungi, insects, butterflies, spiders, moths - the list goes on. All we can do is take note, as far as possible, of what used to grow & then try to replicate that.
One of the strategies I've used is to control weeds near good quality bush & allow the good quality bush to regenerate into the managed areas. This seems to be working exponentially now as native grasses & other grassland plants are taking over from many weedy areas. The good rains we've had in the last 12 months or so have helped. Another factor is that we live with a 475 mm p.a. average rainfall which disadvantages many of the feral plants from high rainfall climates.
I've often wondered why people move to Aussie bushland & then proceed to replace it with English or other exotic landscapes & gardens. Perhaps the European values are still very strong in many people, even after over 200 years of white settlement.
Sometimes it's interesting to have an old post revived. I wonder,what the garden described in the first post looks like now.Some time ago, we lived in a house with lots of "European Crap", as we call it. It took 2 years of hard work to get rid of all the crap.When we sold the house, we were lucky the people left it just the way it was.I drove past the other day, it's the only house in the street you can't see from the road. (isn't that beautiful?) What I did back then, I went to the closest remaining bush, collected seeds of what grew there, and just pread the seeds where ever I could. All my friends said it wouldn't work. Yes it did! I did the same where we live now, everyone says, you can't transplant natives, yes ,I did. Tiny Dusty miller,and, and...trust me, it works. You just have to get it fron as close to you as possible, it would be the same soil and conditions. (????)
Where we are now, those stupid Azaleas and other crap, keep coming up again. I think, in areas like where we live, close to native bush areas, nurseries should NOT be allowed to sell invasive plants! (I can hear people say, "it's a free country", no, it's a country, that needs their native plants to be protected and preserved!! M-L
M-L
We have native trees and shrubs popping up all over the place. Obviously via bird poop. I can't believe people buy natives when I get them for free. How wonderful!
Broadcasting seed is also a strategy I've used, Araminta. It's been particularly successful with drooping sheoak, golden wattle & a wide variety of native grasses.
I fully support your idea of collecting seed from as close as possible to where it's planned to broadcast the seed. This means you're more likely to get plants that will be adapted to local conditions. It also preserves the genetic integrity of the local native vegetation. However, where there are only one or two specimens of a species I think there's a strong argument for introducing seed or plants of the species from elsewhere in order to strengthen the genetic diversity & avoid in-breeding.
As for nurseries that sell invasive species, especially close to bushland.....!!!! It might be a free country, Araminta, but free from what? Certainly not from invasive feral plants, that's for sure. Besides, with freedom comes responsibilty, surely.
Gouldy, those heaps of bird poop are obviously saving you heaps of money. It's amazing how plants turn up that you never thought would. Sometimes the plants transported by birds aren't what I would wish such as bridal creeper. That's a real pest here which smothers native understorey. So far I have it under control but the price of freedom from feral plants is eternal vigilance.
Does bridal creeper have a small purple flower?
Not purple, Gouldy. It has small, white, flowers with six petals. Which reminds me, I discovered a small bridal creeper outbreak (probably known as a bridal creeper party, I imagine) yesterday. It had new, fleshy, green berries (which will turn red) & I didn't have my spray kit with me. I need to deal with this asap before the berries do turn red & attract birds.
I also would love to have a flowering gum in my garden. sometimes I receive [link=http://www.serenataflowers.com/petals/Flowers_delivered.htm]delivered flowers[/link] and the next time I will check if they have flowering gums or at least seeds. Hopefully I will also have one in my garden soon.
We are also converting to natives - the back garden is all native but the front so far is still mainly annuals although we are getting a few grevilleas and bottlebrushes in the front now, I'm afraid I can't resist the show of the petunias in spring, but we are getting around to going wholly native. We have one Eucalyptus ficifolia - it is a self sown one, came from one of our early trees which died in a drought years ago, and imagine our pleasure when the new one popped up! I still find the grevilleas and melaleucas attract the most birds, and I agree they even like the hanging baskets on the back verandah (especially the nesting material in the baskets).
About the mynahs - I am really angry with them at the moment, we went away for about four weeks and when we came back they had ousted our pale-headed rosellas from their nesting box (they had four eggs this year!) and made such a mess of it! Poor rosellas! They raised four chicks last year, we hoped for another brood. Bring on the wattlebirds! They do like the silky oaks but ours are nearly finished flowering now.
Meave
From where I sit, Meave, your garden is looking better & better. As well as attracting native birds you'll probably find that your water bill will eventually drop significantly, particularly if you plant species local to your area.