Sunday 1 April 2007

Australian Botanic Gardens plant sale

Last week the Australian Botanic Gardens had their biannual plant sale. They have one sale in Spring and another in Autumn. We went to their sale at the end of Spring last year and picked up some seedlings for the front yard, including a small acacia, some tiny kangaroo paws, which didn't fare too well, and some native ground covers.

This time we picked up a couple of grevilleas (which did not look like they were related at all), a nice banksia (which we hope will grow to be a nice screen for our study), some native grasses and some larger kangaroo paws.

We planted them in some spots where we had cleared away some of the grass that has been encroaching into the beds. There is a thickish layer of dry mulch and leafy material from our eucalypts out the front but after about 10-15cms down there is a rock hard layer of clay. We have started trying to break this down, by moving wheelbarrow-loads full of organic matter from the beds under the pine tree out the back, or right under the eucalypts and hacking into the clay to mix it in with gypsum. We have gone through a 20kg bag of Gypsum already!!

Hopefully winter rain, gypsum and the roots of the new plants we are putting in eventually start to break through the soil. There's plenty of potential there, it just needs to be broken down.