Can the Revegetation of South Australia Start in Your Garden?
Glenn Christie (Seed Collector and TAFE Lecturer in Revegetation). Urban Ecology Australia. 2004.5
We are hearing a lot about the need to create ‘waterwise’ gardens, a result of the water restrictions that is putting limits on our urban water use. These restrictions are forcing us to look at local (Adelaide plains & hills) native plants anew.
Not surprisingly, the local native plants have handled the past dry summer & autumn much better than many of the plants bought from the nursery. (slight understatement!).
Have you considered that these gardens that are being created & planted with local native plants can also be the basis of income creation (!) by providing sources of local native seed so that the requirement to collect from remnant bush is lessened?
As with any plant, the local natives flower & produce seed. You may not realise that the average price of this seed (cleaned) is approaching $200/kg!
That in itself is interesting but starts to take on significance when considering the amount of native seed currently collected annually (about 20 tonnes) & the astronomical amounts (up around thousands of tonnes) required when pondering the size of the environmental problems that South Australia faces. People are agreed that massive scale planting is required (think salinity, the Murray River & where Adelaide’s drinking water is currently headed) but I wonder if they have thought through the logistics of where all that seed will come from.
As is often the case, we need to crawl before learning to walk before learning to run & so on. It is becoming accepted that orchards of native seed will need to be planted to provide the tonnage required. To take these tonnes out of remnant bush would have huge Can the Revegetation of South Australia start in Your Garden? Glenn Christie, seed collector & TAFE lecturer in revegetation environmental impacts on native fauna food chains (ironic that) & I think be considered unethical. Happily, the northern Adelaide region is home already to some 13 seed orchards that I know of, ranging from 2 hectares in size (the Barossa Bushgardens in Nuriootpa) through tens of square meters (my initial seed orchard at the front & side of the house I rent!). It seems that Adelaide has a couple of years head start on other parts of South Australia and other states.
Where to start? Always start small, have small successes & build up your confidence from there. Start with plants that will produce seed within their first year. Grasses & chenopods (that saltbush family will produce seed within 6-8 months whilst covering your garden rapidly (think a living mulch).
Using mainly groundcover and prostrate plants will probably challenge your thinking about what should be in a native garden, but take note when next out hiking in good quality bush; how few trees & shrubs compared to what is on the ground.
It is early days yet, but I can see a future where there is enormous demand for local groundcover species (and I mean tonnes). Our moving towards waterwise gardens can also be a catalyst for the concept of seed orchards that can provide some income as well as handling the vagaries of our climate & the limits being put on our recreational water use.
These small seed orchards will not produce tonnes of seed by any measure but they can teach us about how to scale up these seed orchards of a size that will provide the tonnes whilst protecting our remnant bush.
2007.7.5