Table Of ContentCONTENTS
CREDITS 5
PREFACE 6
CHAPTER 1 HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN GARDENS: EARLY
INFLUENCES 7
Early gardens 8
People who influenced australian garden design 11
CHAPTER 2 LANDSCAPING APPLICATIONS 15
Formal native gardens 16
Natives for hedging 18
Natives for edging formal gardens 23
Shaping natives for formality 28
The australian bush garden 33
Other types of dry gardens 39
Woodland garden (dry sclerophyll forest) 41
Heathland garden 42
Bush tucker gardens 43
Rainforest gardens 54
Useful tips when landscaping and designing with natives 56
CHAPTER 3 FUNCTIONAL USES OF AUSTRALIAN PLANTS 57
Windbreaks 58
Designing and planting a firebreak 60
Supporting wildlife 63
Land erosion 67
Shaping sloping ground 70
Settling soil 70
CHAPTER 4 GROWING NATIVES 71
General growing 71
Guidelines 71
Environmental factors 72
Nutrition 73
Soils and plants 73
How to plant a native 78
Pruning 81
Pests and diseases 84
CHAPTER 5 COMPONENTS OF A LANDSCAPE 85
Components of a landscape 86
Climate 86
Microclimates 88
Water and plant growth 89
Watering 91
Australian plants for water wise gardens 94
Using water as a garden feature 96
Formal ponds 96
Informal ponds 96
Water garden practicalities 99
Native rockeries 100
What is natural gardening? 103
What is a natural, wild or bush garden? 103
Natural pest control 104
Natural weed control 105
Birds in the garden 105
Designing garden spaces 108
CHAPTER 6 NATIVE TREES 111
Choosing your trees 112
Other popular trees 122
CHAPTER 7 SHRUBS 127
Where to use shrubs 128
CHAPTER 8 FLOWERS 156
Using natives for colour 157
Some plants which flower for long periods 158
Acacias 160
CHAPTER 9 GROUND COVERS AND CLIMBERS 161
How to use groundcovers 162
Climbers 162
Others 169
CHAPTER 10 CONIFERS AND PALMS 170
Conifers 171
Palms 173
CHAPTER 11 FERNS 174
Australian indigenous ferns 174
Tree ferns 187
APPENDIX 189
Distance learning and online courses 189
E books by John Mason and ACS staff include: 190
Printed books by John Mason 190
Useful contacts 192
ACS global partners 192
Social media 192
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CREDITS
© Copyright: John Mason The information in this book is derived
from a broad cross section of resources
Written by (research, reference materials and
John Mason and personal experience) from the authors
staff of ACS Distance Education and editorial assistants in the academic
department of ACS Distance Education.
Photos: It is, to the best of our knowledge,
John Mason composed as an accurate representation
Leonie Mason of what is accepted and appropriate
Nicholas Mason information about the subject, at the
Stephen Mason time of publication.
Layout: The authors fully recognise that
Stephen Mason knowledge is continually changing,
and awareness in all areas of study
Contributors & Editorial Assistants: is constantly evolving. As such, we
Adriana Fraser encourage the reader to recognise
Gavin Cole that nothing they read should ever be
Rosemary Davies considered to be set in stone. They
should alway s strive to broaden
Published by their perspective and deepen their
ACS Distance Education understanding of a subject, and before
acting upon any information or advice,
P.O. Box 2092, Nerang MDC, should always seek to confirm the
Queensland, Australia, 4211 currency of that information, and the
[email protected] appropriateness to the situation in which
www.acsbookshop.com they find themselves.
P O Box 4171, Stourbridge, DY8 2WZ, As such, the publisher and author do not
United Kingdom accept any liability for actions taken by
[email protected] the reader based upon their reading of
www.acsebooks.com this book.
Cover Photo – Made up of several
photos, the main cover photo is
ISBN: 978-0-9922988-3-8
taken at the Royal Botanic Gardens
at Cranbourne, a relatively new
garden that commenced development
in the 1990’s.
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PREFACE
Australian gardeners have over
the past two centuries explored
and experimented not only with the
cultivation of indigenous plants, but
also with ways of using them for various
landscaping purposes.
This book explores both the plants and
the ways in which they might be used in
landscaping.
Australia has a very broad variety of
indigenous plants, ranging from alpine
species that survive under deep winter
snow cover to desert plants that persist
through extended periods of hot and
dry conditions, which sometimes last for
years at a time.
There are tens of thousands of different
Australian indigenous plants, many
of which have never been seriously
cultivated. Others which have been
grown widely in Australian gardens are
only just now being discovered by the
outside world.
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CHAPTER 1 HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN
GARDENS: EARLY INFLUENCES
Australia’s first gardens were made from necessity. They were, in
fact, vegetable gardens used to grow crops to feed the convicts,
their keepers and the administrators of the new colony. The earliest
garden built in the colony was in Sydney - surrounding Government
House. The first version of this garden comprised of geometrically
shaped beds planted with rows of vegetables, and it included a
single Norfolk Island pine.
Some thirty years or so after the first European settlement, as
the colony started to become established and food production
became more efficient and reliable, there was more focus on the
development of ornamental gardens.
Early Australian Gardens needed to be productive. This is the Vegetable Garden at Como
House, built in 1847 in Melbourne. Other parts of this garden mix Australian natives
including Eucalypts, with exotic plants.
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The Craft Cottage at the Royal Melbourne
Botanic Gardens – This garden mixes
native plants and exotics seamlessly.
EARLY GARDENS with exotic plants that were commonly
cultivated in Britain and Europe.
During the early years of settlement,
Australia’s private and public gardens In 1818, Australia built its first botanical
were largely influenced by British garden on land originally set up as
and European styles, and the strong a farm (Farm Cove) - but the farm
geometric shapes of the first gardens failed. The Royal Botanic Gardens
started to give way to shrubberies and Sydney were built on this site under the
mixed plantings. This can be seen in the influence of Governor Macquarie and
influence of Governor Bligh on the later the appointment of Charles Fraser as
gardens surrounding Government house the Colonial Botanist.
– they changed from the utilitarian plots
to gardens constructed in the ‘landscape Other botanical gardens were set up
style’ popular in England and Europe at around the country from that time with the
the time. Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens of
Hobart later in 1818 being a close follower
Many early gardens did incorporate to Sydney. The Melbourne Royal Botanic
Australian indigenous plants, for Gardens followed a couple of decades
example eucalypts and she-oaks. It later in 1845, Adelaide’s Botanic Garden
was not uncommon at this time to see 9 years after that in 1854, and Brisbane
gum trees used in designed gardens City’s Botanic Garden was opened in
to provide the much-needed shade. 1855. Land was set aside in Perth, WA
Usually though, native plants were mixed as early as 1829 but the area was not
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officially gazetted as a botanical garden The influence of Britain on the early
until 1872, and is now famously known as gardens of Australia was marked – as
‘Kings Park and Botanic Garden’. garden fashions changed in England
so they also changed in Australia.
Early landscape style gardens started
to give way to the ‘gardenesque style’
(the introduction of gardens as art).
Examples of this style appeared in
Tasmania as early as 1840.
As the colony grew, influence from other
regions of the world also grew; plants
started to arrive from New Zealand,
South Africa, the Americas, China and
elsewhere. This diverse influence also had
John Mason and son Nicholas, an effect on the development of garden
visiting Kings Park in Perth, in 2011 styles, which became equally as diverse.
Many of the introduced plants performed
By the mid 1830’s, the earliest nurseries so well in the Australian climate that they
in the colony – such as one in Hobart, became pests that threatened to take
started to list a number of Australian over from native species. We still see
natives including Acacias, Casuarinas, this influence today, with many of these
Eucalyptus trees, and Hakea species early introductions listed as noxious or
within their catalogues. environmental weeds.
Ripponlea House and Garden, a 14 acre national trust
property in the suburbs of Melbourne – dates back to 1868
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Royal Sydney Botanic Gardens today
– massed displays of grasses provide
impact in texture and colour
Royal Sydney Botanic Gardens today
– Anigozanthus (Kangaroo Paws) in
full bloom.
Native Garden developed in 1972 by
John Mason in Melbourne was typical of
the time. Natives were fashionable; so
people wanted 100% native plants; but
Fernery at Ripponlea; claimed everyone still loved their lawns; hence
to be the largest in the Southern the typical garden was a lawn fringed
hemisphere, contains massive by beds of native plants, with the
specimens of Australian tree ferns. ground covered in a pine bark mulch.
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