The majority of the trees along the way are various eucalypts, and she-oaks, with a couple of interspersed melaleucas. It’s quite easy to perceive the vegetation as not changing from start to finish. And it’s just as easy to evaluate the dry bush vegetation as having no potential for commercial cultivation. After all, it’s messy-looking. The gum trees are miss-shaped and are holding on to more than their fair share of dead branches. The melaleucas are still blackened from last year’s fires. And the wild she-oaks just don’t seem to possess any appealing characteristics whatsoever, not even symmetry. It’s so easy to group everything together and not give it a second thought.

Here’s the extraordinary part. If I was to tell you that along the stretch of road between Mount Molloy and Mareeba there are at least six species of wild Grevillea, you would probably be a little surprised. After all, Grevilleas are beautiful flowering shrubs which you and I pay good money for. How come we don’t notice them in the bush when we’re driving right past them?

Well, the problem is, most people just see the forest as a whole and ignore the individual plants that are just a blur while we’re doing 100 km/h. The other difficulty is that plants in the bush don’t necessarily look like they do in a garden. Don’t forget that in the wild, plants are subject to insect predation, droughts, bushfires, grazing, competition from other plants, and to top it off, they are growing in very low nutrient soils. Now just use your imagination, and picture your home garden being subjected to all the hardships that wild bush plants suffer every year, and you’ll realise it wouldn’t look any good either.

The good news is that the opposite is just as true.
If you were to take the same plant species you see growing in our local dry bushland and you look after them in a home garden they would look a lot better. They wouldn’t have scorch marks from bushfires. They would be healthier-looking due to improved soils and supplementary fertiliser. Their foliage would be neater, as they are safe from grazing. And insect damage can be minimised by human intervention. Dying or poorly formed branches can be removed, and they can be pruned to make them bushier. And with more reliable watering they will continue to produce more new growth for longer. All in all, they’ll just look a heck of a lot neater and healthier.

The truth is that many of those messy plant species you see growing on the road sides are exactly the same species sold by native plant nurseries, such as Yuruga, as garden plants.
For the local gardener this brings with it the big advantage of having plants which have evolved naturally to thrive in our tropical environment. The local animals such as honeyeaters also benefit, because you are growing the food plants they are accustomed to. And just for peace of mind you don’t have to worry about your plants becoming the next lantana or Singapore daisy, because they have existed here since before white-man.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, April 2008)

For gardeners planting a drier style garden, the range isn’t much bigger. There are the ever-popular compact baeckeas, dwarf melaleucas, prostrate grevilleas, sedges and grasses. And the very popular prostrate Gardenia Glennie River from Cape York. However, as a whole, you’ll find that most native plants that grow successfully up here in the tropics will grow rather tall. The reasons for this are quite straight forward. Plants growing in the rainforest are in a constant struggle for sunlight, so most grow tall to reach the canopy. Those which live on the forest floor are those that can survive with very little light, such as the ferns, some palms and cordylines.

In the drier areas plants are generally over 3 metres tall for a completely different reason. They face the threat of fires every dry season. As a result the ground cover is dominated by grasses which can quickly recover after fires, and not much else. Those small cottage-garden plants so many of us have grown up with originated from places where fires are uncommon, such as heath-lands, and the grassy meadows of Europe. Unfortunately for our native gardeners, our climate is not conducive to evolving small pretty plants. Here they are rather a rarity and we have to make do with the ones we have. Having said that, Yuruga nursery is currently striving to increase its range of small growing native plants.

Most of the popular locally growing species have always been available, but now there are a few species in the collection from a little further away such as Kangaroo Paws and Claw Flowers from WA, and clumping grasses and sedges from around the country. The tricky thing about introducing new native species into the range is determining if they will grow in our local conditions. Let’s face it, Far North Queensland has a climate that is completely different to the major metropolitan areas of Australia, and for that reason, not everything that grows down south will grow up here.

So if you have a low-growing native plant in your garden that you think Yuruga Nursery might be interested in, you might like to let us know about it so it can be shared with your fellow north Queenslanders.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, January 2009)

Grevilleas are a fantastic source of nectar for birds. In fact some flowers can be so laden with sweet nectar that it will drip from the flowers early in the morning, and this is a good opportunity to sample some of the sugary syrup yourself just as Aborigines have done for centuries.

Naturally, other flowering plants can also be used to attract birds, but none come close to the success of grevilleas. They have co-evolved with our native nectar-feeding birds and are perfect partners. The grevilleas provide food for the birds in the form of rich nectar, and in return the birds transport pollen from one flower to the next. It’s so simple yet effective.

Humans benefit in two ways – we enjoy providing a buffet for our native feathered friends, watching their antics as they dine, and the colourful splash they bring to the garden.  Grevillea flowers come in a large range of colours and forms, decorating and adding allure to any garden.

There are a large number of grevilleas available that do well in the tropics as long as you have a well-drained spot to grow them in. The traditional cultivars come with names as colourful as their flowers. Strawberry blonde, orange marmalade, pink surprise, moonlight, honey gem and misty pink, just to name a few. There are also wild grevillea species such as shiressii, venusta, formosa and pteridifolia, which may be a little difficult to find in most nurseries, but are definitely worth searching for. Surprisingly even Yuruga Nursery may not have these species all of the time so you need to be diligent if you’re after something very special.

So there you have it, it’s easy to attract native birds to your garden – simply plant a couple of grevilleas. You’ll be surprised by the number of native birds that will visit while they are in flower.

Happy gardening.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, February 2008)

When planted in a garden and given a tiny bit of care they can be grown as beautiful feature trees or shrubs. Remember that in a controlled garden environment, plants are less affected by the elements than in the wild. They are protected from fires so their bark is never scarred, dead or mis-formed limbs are removed, drought stress can be alleviated with regular watering and insect pests can be controlled. You can even prune and shape them as you wish. All these things combined will result in a good-looking plant that still retains its Australian heritage – in other words, they scrub up alright.

Take for example Banksia Spinulosa – in the wild it’s usually obscured by tall grass but in the garden its fine foliage and large golden to red coloured flower spikes are very eye catching. There is also the Polar Gum (Eucalyptus platyphylla), which has a spectacular white trunked gum and unusually wide light green leaves. This tree has been used as a feature tree in the center of Yuruga Nursery’s car park. It may be a little large for most suburban gardens, but if you are fortunate enough to have the space, it is definitely worth planting.

Another diamond in the rough is the Grevillea glauca. You would have driven past it on the road between Kuranda and Mareeba without giving it a second look. Yet once grown in nursery conditions their stunning silver foliage stand out. Even hakeas, paperbarks, ironbarks and sedges can become handsome feature plants. And remember, because they are native North Queensland plants they are going to be tough and require much less attention than plants from down south. So don’t be put off by the way they look in the wild, because out there they’ve got a much tougher life than they will have in the comfort of your garden.

Happy gardening.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, January 2008)