Native Plants for NSW -
October 2023
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Bauera rubioides (L Godden) |
From the President
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Dear {Contact_First_Name},
Members of our Society undoubtedly enjoy spending time in their gardens and in nature, but also meeting with other like-minded people. The recent gathering hosted by Illawarra Group provided a selection of guided walks in the morning and some entertaining and informative speakers in the afternoon. Many thanks to the Illawarra Group for organising this very successful event only 18 months after the group was reestablished.
The next Society wide event is in November in Goulburn, hosted by the Southern Tablelands Group. Details are in this issue and I would encourage early registration.
One of the APS NSW key strategic pillars is to partner for conservation, and in our recent member survey you told us how important it is that we are actively pursuing this value. However, it is important in these activities to pursue a scientific evidence based approach and to be aware of the interconnectedness of many components of the environment. We need to be confident that removing one environmental threat does not inadvertently make others worse.
As you are all aware, on October 14th Australia will vote on the Voice referendum and many organisations have been encouraged to take a position on it. Whilst this is not an issue that directly relates to immediate conservation of native flora, it is an extremely important decision for Australia, particularly for our First Nations peoples. We strongly encourage all members to seek balanced, factual information on both sides of the campaign, and to make an informed decision with your vote.
John Desmond, President
eNewsletter Contents:
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Newcastle meeting & talk - Obelisk Hill Landcare When: 4th October 2023, 7pm Where: Hunter Wetlands, Shortland
Join us in Newcastle at Hunter Wetlands, Shortland for a captivating evening featuring a distinguished guest speaker, Bob Clifton from Obelisk Hill Landcare. Bob's expertise and passion for land conservation promise to inspire and educate us on the vital importance of preserving our natural environment. Don't miss this opportunity to learn and discover how we can all contribute to the sustainability of our local landscapes.
More details here
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Harbour Georges River Group meeting & talk - Garden design in theory and practice
When: 4th October 2023, 6pm for a meal, meeting starts 7:30pm
Where: Club Burwood RSL
Garden design workshop with James Middleton, one of our members, who is a landscape designer. James will describe his practice in landscape design, illustrated with reference to a community garden project he is working on with the Clemton Park Uniting Church. This will be followed by a discussion on how to implement the garden vision with a limited budget and lots of muscle power.
More information here |
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North Shore Group meeting & talk - Rambling through the rushes
When: Friday 13th October, 7pm for 7:30
Where: Beatrice Taylor Hall, Hornsby
Karen Wilson, a seasoned expert with 43 years of experience at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, will take us on a journey through the world of rushes, sedges, she-oaks, and smartweeds. With a background in Agricultural Science and a passion for biodiversity, Karen will delve into her extensive studies of these plants, her contributions to global biodiversity information projects, botanical history, and the intriguing world of plant nomenclature.
More information here |
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North Shore Group - Walks and Talks
When: 9:45am Mondays
Where: Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden
Hear a talk by members of the North Shore group of the Australian Plants Society then be guided on a walk in the Ku-ring-gai Wildflower Garden to see and learn about our focus species as they come into flower.
Oct 9 Walk only: West Mueller track return 1pm
Oct 16 Waratahs and other members of Family Proteaceae
Oct 23 Callistemon, Kunzea and Melaleuca (Family Myrtaceae)
Oct 30 Leptospermum and Baeckea (Family Myrtaceae)
More details here |
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Sutherland Shire Council Nursery (supplied) |
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50th anniversary celebration - Open day at Sutherland Shire nursery
When: 21st October, 8am - 1pm
Where: Sutherland Shire Community Nursery, The Boulevard, Gymea Sutherland Shire Community Nursery is a council run nursery that is part of the Council's Bushcare Unit. We grow plants that are indigenous to the Shire. Many of the nursery propagation volunteers are also members of APS. We will have available species we often do not sell to the public, as well as information on Bushcare, Waste Services and Greenweb. There will be a colouring in competition for the kids and we will be giving away small reusable jute bags that are an ideal size for tubes. For those who are interested, we will have short nursery tours running on the hour, to provide a behind the scenes experience, with one of our qualified nursery team. We hope to see you on the day.
More details here
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APS annual get together
When: 18-19 November 2023 Where: Goulburn, home of the big merino Cost: $35 APS members for the event. Includes morning tea, Saturday lunch, gifts for guest speakers and incidentals. Saturday dinner $58/person for a 2 course meal.
On Saturday, we start at East Goulburn Public School with morning tea and a talk on Eremophila by Dr Lyndal Thorburn, leader of the Eremophila study group. The afternoon activity highlight is a tour of the Goulburn Wetlands. Saturday dinner we have a talk from guest speaker Dr. Brian Faulkner, Biodiversity Assessment Officer, Goulburn-Mulwaree Council - Threatened species of the Goulburn-Mulwaree district. Sunday activities include a bush walk or garden visits. The annual weekend away is always an enjoyable and social event, a great opportunity to catch up with friends from other district groups.
More details and the registration link here. Please register asap, note that there are limited numbers for Saturday dinner. |
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Belmore Park Goulburn (creative commons) |
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Re-greening our country and saving our species - planting events
When: Various weekends and week days, August - October 2023 Where: 'Moorlands' farm, Biala, NSW. By joining the Oatley Flora and Fauna Conservation Society members, who are planting 5,500 native trees and shrubs in the coming spring, you can add to the essential habitat for the endangered Superb Parrot which is breeding at ‘Moorlands’ located in the South West Slopes of NSW.
More information and registrations here |
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Planning is underway for the ANPSA Biennial Conference in Melbourne in 2024. See here for more information, save the dates! |
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And finally, don't forget there is a full listing of all APS NSW events including district groups on our website here |
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APS Quarterly meeting - Illawarra |
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Mt Keira watches over the Wollongong Botanic Gardens (supplied: Illawarra group) |
A big thank you to the Illawarra group for hosting the quarterly APS NSW gathering recently. Re-established 18 months ago, the Illawarra group members made a great team effort to organize, stage and then enjoy this event with the community and other APS groups. To give some variety they organised 3 walks in the morning. Attendees could nominate which walk they wanted to join. In the afternoon, they had some wonderful speakers including one who gave a talk on the fly when there was a last minute change. And as always a wonderful afternoon tea was provided. Read a report of the walks and day here.
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Emma Rooksby and Leon Fuller gave a talk in the afternoon titled 'Local native street trees - an idea whose time has come' Leon and Emma co-founded Growing Illawarra Natives, a community project that is a resource for the local area to help residents get to know and grow more native species. One element of the project is to get more local street trees out there.
There are many benefits of greening and planting more urban trees including biodiversity, but also The Heart Foundation estimates that for every dollar spent on street tree planting and management, $3.81 in benefits accrue. Read the full report on their talk to learn more.
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Plant selection and design
Jeff Howes has been rereading a book ‘the Old Country Australian Landscapes, Plants and People’ published in 2005 by George Seddon (1927-2007), who was an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Melbourne. This book is a great read and will get you thinking in many different ways about growing and designing with our native plants. It highlighted to me the folly (my words) of trying to grow native plants that were not suited for my local environment. He shares his insights and tips from this wonderful book. |
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Dendrophthoe vitellina (J Collins) |
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Mistletoes
Seeing isolated dead trees that show signs of past, heavy mistletoe growth in our semi-cleared landscapes might suggest that mistletoes are the culprit. On the contrary, they are keystone ecological species, attractive components of our flora and can be part of our own gardens. Peter Geelan-Small shares with us some information about these interesting and important plants.
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Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan
Our conservation officer, Dan Clarke, on behalf of the board, wrote in support this month of the amendment of the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan. This has been an issue with passionate debate in the public sphere. The board discussed the issue and agreed that we are deeply concerned about the impact of feral horses on the Kosciuszko National Park Estate. We chose not to comment on the actual methods of control, given our expertise is not in fauna-control methods, but we wanted to be clear that we strongly support protecting our unique plant species and ecological communities, as effectively as possible using evidence-based scientific approaches.
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E pauciflora at Kosciuskzo NP (J Arney)
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Leptospermum myrtifolium (A Fairley)
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Leptospermum spp. changes
Some of you may have heard recently, that some of our beloved Leptospermum spp. have been moved to a new genus. Yes….that’s right….the constant changing nature of our botanical names continues.
A recently published paper in Taxon, by Peter Wilson and Margaret Heslewood (both based at NSW Herbarium) accounts for the changes. Dan Clarke plans to draft up a detailed article on this topic in future.
In short, Leptospermum has been reduced to members of woody-fruited taxa, which is now 34 species in total (reduced from about 90), and, where they occur in Australia, they are now limited to the eastern states.
A former genus, Leptospermopsis, is re-instated for most species in Western Australia, and 3 new genera are created for non-woody fruited taxa.
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Actinotus helianthi (L Godden)
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This story was written by Brian Roach and first appeared in GardenDrum, in 2016
We feel confident anyone reading this would agree that gardeners have a better insight than most into changing weather patterns. Whatever the reason, the hot days seem to be getting hotter and the cold days colder but it’s usually the former that presents the greater challenges in selecting the right plant for the hot spot.
Enter stage right our wonderful grey-foliaged native plants. Read on for more thoughts on why these plants have such an important part to play in our gardens and lives. |
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A message from Southern Tablelands Group.. |
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Goulburn wetlands (C Galland)
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Hi to you lovely people who are thinking about coming to the APS annual get-together in the Southern Tablelands (Goulburn). I hope that you can make it as we would love to show you what can be done in our cooler and drier climate.
I will first assure you that our weather in mid-November should be very pleasant, not as hot as is forecast for the rest of summer so maybe it is time to book yourselves in for the weekend and know that you can hide from the heat for the rest of summer. Although, having lived here for about 40 years, I know that it is always advisable to have a jumper in the car.
Your minds will be stimulated on the Saturday morning by Dr Lyndal Thorburn who will be enlightening us about Eremophilias (Emu Bushes), many of which will grow well in the area. Lyndal is Leader of the Eremophila Study Group, a mine of information and an excellent and entertaining speaker.
It would be great to show you our Wetlands in the afternoon. These have been developed over the last ten years, being planted with indigenous species, as well as having gardens of Australian plants at the entrances to showcase what will grow in our area and encourage others to get growing natives.
Energetic people could walk to the top of Rocky Hill (or you can take your car) to get a great view of the wetlands and the whole of Goulburn City.
Dinner at Mercure on Saturday evening will provide a wonderful opportunity to renew friendships and listen to our guest speaker Dr Brian Faulkner, Environment and Biodiversity Assessment Officer, Goulburn/Mulwaree Council who will talk on 'Threatened species conservation of the Goulburn/Mulwaree Government Area'. You will need to book early for this as spaces are limited.
Sunday brings you the opportunity to check out Peter Wauchope’s large and varied garden as shown below. His garden is on the outskirts of town and you will have the opportunity to purchase plants that have been grown by members of our group and are hardy to our climate.
Or you could always start the day off by visiting Alison Hone Reserve (10km from town) which shows some of the local conditions and species to be found here, naturally.
And then of course, in the afternoon, you could travel further out to some of our members' native gardens on their properties.
We are all looking forward to welcoming you to the Southern Tablelands hoping that you will have a great weekend.
Jen Ashwell (President, Southern Tablelands APS NSW) |
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Final words... Ever wondered why Eremophilas have resin? Recently a member asked this of Dr Lyndal Thorburn, the leader of the Eremophila study group. Read on to find out why. Dr Thornburn is a speaker at the APS NSW weekend away in November if you want to learn more.
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