Hello birding-aus,
We have recently moved from Vic to QLD (Gladstone…coastal Capricorn region) and bought our first property. As a keen bird photographer, I’d like to plant out our back terraced area with natives to attract birds. Unfortunately, I have very little gardening experience and all of it was back in Vic. So not only do I not what to ask for, I don’t even know what I have!
The following link is to a photo gallery in Facebook of my back yard and some close up pics of some of the plants. You don’t need to have a facebook account to view the photos as it is a public gallery.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.575605476980.2077669.212901473&type=1&l=1c0b9637f6
Before trekking down to the local nursery, I was hoping someone may be able to offer me some suggestions of bird friendly native plants. Which plants have you had success with? Are there combinations of plants to enable flowering all year? Are any of the plants in the images worth keeping? Are there any recommended nurseries on the Capricorn coast?
Any advice is welcome, it will at least give me a starting point.
Thanks,
Hannah
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Hi all,
Many thanks for the detailed responses. The articles posted were very interesting and a good starting point. I will give the local Society for Growing Australian Plants a call and work from there.
Kind regards,
Hannah
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I am from the NSW North Coast and not your area but from the photos I can see the usual suspects that are threatening our biodiversity. The shrubs are mostly Duranta erecta, which gets masses of orange-yellow berries which are transported into the bush by birds. It is native to Mexico to South America and the Caribbean. The palms are Golden Cane Palms, a native of Madagascar, and while not likely to spread too far should be replaced with local palms. The Lomandras (Mat-rush) are probably OK but most likely not from the local area. There was one small tree that had been pruned. It looked like a bottlebrush but again is probably not local.
We developed our garden at Coutts Crossing with only local species grown from seeds collected in the local area. If there is a nursery in town that does this great otherwise you will end up with plenty of natives but probably not local natives. The local fauna is adapted to the local plants so if you go native but not local then you can create more problems than if you plant exotics, and I am not suggesting that you do this.
I will send you a paper that I published on how we developed our backyard in an ecologically friendly way. We live in a village and the number of native species (birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians) that use or have visited the yard is impressive – over 130 species by the year 2000.
I hope that these comments have been helpful
Regards
Greg
Dr Greg. P. Clancy Ecologist and Wildlife Guide Coutts Crossing NSW