After all, we have some pretty amazing little creatures sharing this environment with us. For example, the Hercules Moth has the largest wingspan of any moth in the world. Yet how many people grow their host trees, the Queensland Bleeding Heart, with the aim to attract these record-holding moths? Not many I bet.

I guess for most people, unless it’s colourful and popular it’s just not worth attracting. I’m not suggesting you fill containers with water to breed mosquitoes, leave the bin lid open to attract flies, or spread sugar through the house to bring in the ants. I’m talking about all the fascinating little creatures that bring life to the garden. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, just think back to your childhood. The time in your life when you were much smaller and everything else was much bigger. Back then every butterfly was special, and every beetle deserved a second look and maybe a prod. Stick insects looked alien and fireflies were magical. Close to Christmas, cicadas became collectables, and every shiny beetle was obviously a Christmas beetle. And of course there was that bright blue butterfly that mum and dad pointed out fifty million times.

If you are interested in creating a garden that will attract our six legged friends, there is a difficult way, and an easy way to do it. If you’re willing to make the effort you can bury your head in books and surf the web to find which plant will attract which specific insects: Cassia and Albizia trees to attract Carpenter Bees, Pandanus monticola as food for the Pepermint Stick insect and Adenia vines for the Red Lacewing Butterfly just to name a few combinations. Or you can do it the easy way by planting any local native plants. It may not be very specific, but you’ll see that every plant will attract something, and in most cases when a native plant flowers it will attract a colourful assortment of fascinating little somethings. The more plants you add to your garden the more wildlife you’ll attract and the more interesting your garden will become – especially for the kids. After all in the eyes of a child a gigantic stick insect is much cooler than a blue butterfly. While as an adult, you’ll be surprised how rewarding it is to see a new butterfly in the backyard when you know you’re the reason it’s there.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, September 2009)

So what can you do in your garden during the dry season? It’s simple. Get your garden ready for the wet season.

It may not be the best time to plant new plants into the garden because of the dry, but it is a good time to pot up your smaller plants into larger pots to increase their size in preparation for the wet. You see, even though it’s dry, the days and nights are warming up, so with a little extra water and fertilizer, freshly re-potted plants can be encouraged to have an early growth spurt.

Subsequently you’ll have much larger and healthier plants to plant when the rains do finally come. In fact some gardeners including myself purchase, pot-up and store our new plants all through the dry season waiting for the wet season to start so we can plant everything at the most suitable time of the year.

The dry season is also the ideal time to do a bit of plant culling. Plants that have underperformed, outgrown their welcome, died, or you simply don’t like the looks of can be removed to make room for new ones. And because the wet isn’t here yet, you can do this at your own pace and without all the rain, sweat and complaining.

You’ll even have plenty of time to ponder about what you’ll plant in its place. It doesn’t have to stop with the removal either. It’s actually the best time to prepare the ground for the replacement plant, because it’s much more pleasant doing this in the dry than the wet. Dig out the roots of the old plant, loosen the soil and then cover it with a good layer of mulch to prevent the weeds from invading the newly prepared space. And this way you’ll have till January to make up your mind as to what should be planted there. Who knows? If you’re after something really specific, it may take you all that time to find it.

Then once the rains start, all you need to do is bring your collection of plants out of storage, move the mulch to one side, dig a hole in the previous prepared soil, pop in the pre-determined plant, move the mulch back into place, water it, and you’re done. Simple as that.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, August 2009)

To me choosing plants, just like food, and clothing, are very much a personal choice. And to be completely honest, it is nearly impossible to make a plant selection for someone via E-mail or the telephone. Just as it would be impossible to give fashion advice to a person whose taste you don’t know or whose body shape you haven’t seen.

Up here in the tropics we are lucky enough to have a huge range of native and exotic plants to choose from. Alone at Yuruga Nursery there are over 500 different native plants at any one time. So your best bet is to go out and do a bit of good old-fashioned shopping. Pretend you’re looking for shoes. Find plants you like the looks of, check the size and other features that are important to you. If it’s what you’re after, take it home, and if you’re still a little uncertain there are always sales staff to ask for confirmation that you’ve made an appropriate choice. However I must stress that the most important thing is that you’ve chosen a plant you like the looks of, because after all you’re going to be the one who has to live with it, and unlike shoes, you can’t put your unwanted plants into a charity bin for re-distribution.

A fact that most of us plant-people don’t like to admit to is that after several years in the industry we will often go for plant recommendations that are considered the “safe plant options” because we know these popular stock-standard plants have always worked. Unfortunately it also means that the less well known species are ignored and you may end up with a garden that looks the same as your neighbours. Don’t forget, you are allowed to take risks when selecting plants because you may end up finding that you have a greener thumb than you realised and subsequently, by the end of it you’ll feel a much stronger connection to the plants surrounding your home.

To all the people who have over the last few years been brave enough to allow me to select plants on their behalf and have come back for more. I sincerely thank you for your trust.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, July 2009)

The first being the Golden Cane Palm. This exotic palm is extremely easy to grow and has thus become a very common garden plant. The big problem is that it sheds a lot of fronds from its multiple trunks. And unless it’s tidied up regularly it ends up looking sick because there are dead fronds stuck between the live ones.

The second is, that because palms were extremely popular in the past, people planted too many of them in their gardens. Subsequently there were a lot of palm fronds falling down, making a mess and a whole lot of work. The problem is that palms don’t drop little leaves like trees do. Instead they drop whopping great big fronds which most people don’t know what to do with.

My advice regarding palms is quite simple. Avoid messy palms such as the exotic Golden Cane Palm and stick to neat single trunked and preferably native species. And only plant a few. That way cleaning up their fallen fronds be comes more of a rare occurrence rather than a regular weekend chore. If you’re wondering what to do with the fallen fronds, just cut them up with secateurs and use them as mulch. As long as you don’t have too many, it takes very little effort to do.

In my garden I have only a handful of palms and all are native. Of these I have a couple of favourites including the Black Palm (Normanbya normanbyi) which in my opinion looks like a more elegant version of the commonly grown Foxtail Palm. For a moist shaded area the local Fan Palm (Licuala ramsayi) would be the pick of the bunch. It’s a magnificent palm often seen along costal rainforest tracks, and because it is relatively slow growing you’ll hardly even notice it when an old frond dies. If you’re property is a little on the dry side, the Ribbon Fan Palm (Livistonia decipiens) is a good and somewhat faster growing alternative. Sure, that means more fronds to tidy up, but to be honest, I’d rather spend ten minutes a year tidying up my single Ribbon Fan Palm, than not having it.

Palms are beautiful and elegant plants that give tropical gardens that distinc tively tropical look that can’t be achieved with any other plants. I believe that little bit of work is definitely worth it.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, June 2009)

Of all the native Australian plants, I’d have to say the Banksias are probably my favourite. And I know there are many other people out there who are Banksia fans, eager to collect as many species as possible. The only downside is that living up here in the tropics we are limited to growing only those species that can handle our very humid wet season. If you’ve ever tried growing a Southern species or worse still, one from W.A. you would have learnt that they do very well in the dry season, but once the wet-season starts, they go down-hill very quickly until all that’s left are some soggy black leaves around a desiccated stem. The good news is that there are a number of very diverse species that grow very well up here in the Far North. These are our own tropical Banksias which people down south or in WA have trouble growing.

At last count I’ve planted more than 70 banksias in my garden. I have to admit, most of these are local varieties of the Hair-pin Banksia (Banksia spinulosa) but that’s simply because these are my all-time favourites. Even though they can be neglected and left un-pruned, they’ll grow into a decent shape and reward you with spectacular showy flowers each year. I should also point out that the local birds will appreciate the abundance of nectar they produce. In my opinion they are almost the perfect native plant for the home garden. They’re small, require very little maintenance, are drought tolerant, will grow in poor soils and on difficult rocky sites. They’ll even attract birds with their large spectacular flower spikes. What more could you want? They are even a curious plant because if they’re grown from wild collected seed like the ones at Yuruga Nursery, you won’t know what colour the flowers are going to be until they come into bloom. Colours normally vary from orange to yellow, but very occasionally a red or white flowering plant will appear in the mix.

There are a handful of other Banksia species that have proven to grow well in the tropics. The Hinchinbrook Banksia, (Banksia plagiocarpa) which as the name implies comes from Hinchinbrook Island. It’s a medium sized shrub or small tree that may grow as tall as 4 meters in cultivation. The most interesting feature of this plant is the colour of its flowers, they are a sort of blue grey which has lead to it also being called the Blue Banksia. Though I have to say, recognising the blue in their flowers does require some imagination. Of all the banksias in my garden, this one definitely has the most consistent flowering, in fact it appears to produce flowers all year. If you’re after a more rugged Australiana look in your garden you should consider planting a Swamp Banksia (Banksia robur). It’s not what I would call a beautiful plant but rather one with lots of character. Its branches are rarely straight, and its very large leaves are more rigid than you would expect. The flowers aren’t colourful but they are big and solid, and won’t move under the weight of even the most gorged honeyeater. Banksia dentata has the least imaginative name of all the Northern Banksias. It’s simply known as the Tropical Banksia. An appropriate name as this species even occurs in New Guinea, and that makes it the only Banksia to grow naturally outside Australia. There are two more species which are worth considering. The Coastal Banksia (Banksia integrifolia) from south of the tropics grows well in costal conditions. And Banksia aquilonia which grows more as a rainforest tree than the small shrubs we associate with banksias.

To be quite frank, if you live in the tropics I wouldn’t even bother with the remaining 72 banksia species unless you’re after a real challenge and don’t mind frequent failure. The six species I’ve written about have a good track record in local gardens, and furthermore they are varied in size, growth habit and flower colour, which means you’re not missing out on anything either. So, go on and do yourself and the local wildlife a favour by planting a local Banksia today.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, May 2009)

So, how to plant up that special courtyard?

Well, you can always take the simple and easy approach and fill it up with tried and trusted gingers, but hey, do you really want a boring old courtyard that looks just like everyone else’s?

Here’s a list of wonderful tropical natives that will make your courtyard look stunning. And as you get to know the plants and the stories they tell, your courtyard will become a great talking point as well.

This article is based on the assumption that your courtyard is a relatively protected little nook in your garden, and that it is not an exposed open area.

Your courtyard checklist: Agapetes meiniana (Misty Bells) Alpinia caerulea (Common Ginger) Argophyllum spp Cordyline manners-suttoniae (Palm Lily) Myrsine (Rapanea) spp (Muttonwood) Native ferns Noahdendron nicholasii (Noahdendron) Pseudoweinmannia lachnocarpa (Rose Mara) Psychotria spp Pullea stutzeri (Hard Alder) Rhodamnia spp (Malletwoods) Rhododendron lochiae (Native Rhododendron) Rhodomyrtus spp (Rhodomyrtus) Sankowskya stipularis (Sankowskya) Sarcotoechia serrata (Fern-Leafed Tamarind) Syzygium alatoramulum (Tinkling Satinash) Syzygium apodophyllum (Rex Satinash) Sysygium wilsonii (Powder-Puff Lilly-Pilly)

Give your courtyard a backbone…

Rapaneas, Rhodamnias, Rhodomyrtus and Psychotria are shrubs which are basically similar in size, shape and function. They are all medium shrubs of a size well suited to courtyards, with good bushy form, and dense foliage which is excellent for creating privacy between you and your neighbours. Think of them as the backbone of your courtyard planting, since they make a great backdrop for showing off some of the stunning feature plants suggested later in this brochure.
Their common names (Muttonwood, Malletwood and Psychotria) are a bit at odds with elegant, sophisticated, inner-city living, but what the heck … it’s a good talking point!

Plant these backbone species in your courtyard:

• Myrsine* (Rapanea) sp Cape York (Cape Muttonwood)
• Myrsine (Rapanea) subsessilis (Red Muttonwood)
• Rhodamnia costata (Rib-fruited Malletowood)
• Rhodomyrtus effusa (Grey Rhodomyrtus)
• Rhodomyrtus sericea (also Grey Rhodomyrtus)
• Psychotria sp Mt Baldy (Mt Baldy Psychotria)

The Rhodomyrtus have soft, pretty foliage, while the Rhodamnias and Rapaneas have firmer, more glossy leaves.

Mt Baldy Psychotria produces masses of small white fruit much sought-after by birds which will visit your courtyard for a delicious snack. Where’s Mt Baldy? It’s the mountain directly west of Atherton, overlooking the bustling Tableland town.

(*You’ll notice that Rapaneas have had a name change to Myrsine, but Rapanea is easier to say.)

Add some Argophyllums…

Argophyllums are beautiful understorey shrubs, and perfect for a protected position that a courtyard provides. There are a couple of species to choose from, but what they all have in common is the beautiful foliage with its characteristic gorgeous silver sheen beneath.
All the Argophyllums are rare plants in the wild.
Argophyllum sp Babinda is a very rare plant with lovely glossy green leaves. Not surprisingly, being from Babinda, it is best suited in high rainfall areas!
Argophyllum nullumense is from northern NSW, while Argophyllum sp Cape York is (obviously) from Cape York, and both are quite easy to grow.
Argophyllum verae is a really rare species, and is named after Vera Scarth-Johnson, the late Cooktown artist who revelled in recording the Cape York flora on canvas. If you visit the Cooktown Botanic Gardens, you will see her beautiful paintings on display in the Art Gallery at the gardens. This Argophyllum is different to the others, in that the foliage is a soft velvety grey on the upper surface, but the undersurface has the same beautiful silver sheen that is the signature of this lovely group of plants.

Argophyllums really encourage you to get tactile in your garden. Once you’re hooked on the glorious silver underside, you’ll find yourself turning the leaves over every time you walk past, and showing everyone else as well!

And now for some attention grabbers …

The Australian tropical rainforests provide us with some stunning foliage plants, which look just phenomenal when featured in a courtyard setting.

Sarcotoechia serrata is not called Fern-Leafed Tamarind for nothing! This plant has the most gorgeous soft ferny foliage that you can ever imagine. The feathery fern-like new growth starts out pastel pink, fading to cream and green as it matures. What’s more, this plant is only a shrub, so it fits beautifully into a suburban landscape. Being naturally a slender shrub, it needs to be nestled against a more solid backdrop (discussed above) for maximum effect.

Sankowskya stipularis (Sankowskya) is a very rare understorey shrub from the Julatten area. It has brilliant bright red-pink new growth which literally lights up the garden. Named after Garry Sankowsky (author of many of the books and CDs we have for sale here at Yuruga), this plant is unfortunately under threat from misguided landholders who, while retaining the canopy trees, ‘just cleared the undergrowth’ in the rainforest on their properties.

Noahdendron nicholasii

Noahdendron nicholasii (Noahdendron) is an extremely rare plant named after the restricted location in which it grows naturally in the wild. ‘Noahdendron’ literally means ‘Noah’s Tree’, referring to Noah Creek where it is found in the Daintree rainforests. If you look closely at this remarkable plant, you will see that it has quite unusual foliage, featuring bright pink pendulous new growth and large stipules decorating the branchlets. While naturally slender in habit, it is easy to shape into a dense bushy shrub by regular pruning, and its delicately perfumed flowers hang in profusion during flowering time. A beautiful talking point at family BBQs.

Some flowers to knock your socks off…

Syzygium wilsonii (Powder-Puff Lilly-Pilly) is a beautiful small shrub with weeping branches, lovely pink new growth and the most amazing red/maroon powder-puff flowers you have ever seen. It thrives in a protected courtyard situation, and is easy to grow. If you want a talking point, this is it!

Fantastic Foliage Fillers

There’s a family of rainforest plants (called the Cunoniaceae for those with a scientific bent) which have simply gorgeous foliage. When you drive through the rainforest (down the Palmerston Highway, for instance) and you see masses of bright pink or red foliage hanging out over the banks, chances are the plants are members of this family. While they may be large trees in the wild, these plants adapt remarkably well to cultivation, and look simply stunning in a courtyard environment.

Pullea stutzeri (Hard Alder), Pseudoweinmannia lachnocarpa (Rose Mara) and Caldcluvia australiensis (Rose Alder) may have unpronounceable names, but don’t let that stop you! Plant them anyway, prune them regularly to promote a dense shape and lots of brilliant new growth, give them a bit of extra water if they look stressed, and stand back and wait for the admiring comments from your friends and neighbours. Then try a bit of name dropping (if you can get your tongue around the Latin!).

Just for good measure, throw in a couple of broad leafed, strap-like plants to add a great contrast and make a real tropical statement. The native cordylines (eg Cordyline manners-suttonae Palm Lily) not only have fantastic large lime-green tropical leaves, but bear huge bunches of spectacular bright red glossy fruit as well. And the native gingers such as Alpinia caerulea are tough hardy stand-bys to fill in the remaining gaps.

A courtyard always has a hanging basket!

For a hanging basket with a difference, add a beautiful Agapetes meiniana (Misty Bells) to your courtyard. This unusual plant from the misty high peaks of our World Heritage wet tropics rainforests, has thick shiny waxy leaves and beautiful bright pink bell-shaped flowers. In the wild it is found with our native Rhododendron (see below), where it is a vine scrambling over exposed rocks or establishing an epiphytic foothold high in the canopy of the rainforest. In cultivation, it is perfectly suited to a hanging basket, where it will live happily for years as if in its native tree-tops.

If your climate is a bit too hot and coastal for Misty Bells, substitute Medinilla balls-headleyi (Daintree Medinilla) in your hanging basket for an equally stunning effect.

It’s not a courtyard without some ornamental tub specimens!

Did you know that Australia has only one Rhododendron (Rhododendron lochiae)? Our native Rhododendron is a very rare plant, found only in rainforests at the very tops of our highest peaks such as Bartle Frere and Bellenden Ker, where it is actually a rather untidy scrambler. However, in cultivation is can be trained into a tidy plant well suited to pot-plant culture. Put one in an ornamental tub, and tell your friends why it is so special. And after a few years you will be rewarded with beautiful bright pink flowers.

And now for the feature tubs…

Get yourself a couple of large feature tubs, and plant the following lilly-pillies for a stunning effect:

Syzygium alatoramulum (Tinkling Satinash – what a gorgeous name!)
Syzygium apodophyllum (Rex Satinash, from the Rex Range above Mossman, of course).

Both these tropical lilly-pillies have stunningly beautiful foliage and make superb tub specimens. A brilliant centrepoint for a unique tropical courtyard.

Lastly, don’t forget the ferns

Now all there is to do is to pop in native ferns wherever there’s a space, and your courtyard will be complete.

Now sit back and enjoy!

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)

When we bring new plants back to our homes we want to do the best we can for them. After all, it’s another life to nurture and help grow, something like a stationary new addition to the family. So we dig a nice big hole, add lots of organic matter and a good helping of expensive fertilizer. We gently place the plant into the hole, firm the soil around it, water it well, and two weeks later we try to figure out why it has gone all yellow and lost half of its leaves. Unfortunately its demise was a result of good intentions.

You see, the best way to kill natives is to give them more fertiliser than they actually need. So it’s the fertiliser in the hole and the added organic matter that has most likely led to it’s demise. The good thing about natives is that they don’t ask for much. Good drainage, enough to drink and a layer of mulch is all that they need.

Another common cause of death for native plants is the practise of teasing out the roots. This may be fine for some European plants, but our natives will complain bitterly if you disturb their roots. After all, they have delicate, super-efficient roots which have evolved to extract nutrients effectively from our nutrient deficient Australian soils.

If you’re worried about buying a root-bound plant, there is a simple solution. Ask the nursery staff to show you its roots by removing the pot from the plant. And if you see a mass of roots wound around the inside of the pot, simply choose a younger plant. Speaking of removing pots from plants. Never grab plants and pull them out of their pots. Always remove the pot from the plant. If this makes no sense to you, come to Yuruga Nursery and get a staff member to demonstrate it.

Which brings me to the final point. No, you can not plant them while they are still in their pots! Some people have actually tried this method with, predictably, very unfavourable results. At first the plants will just sit there and grow very slowly as the roots try to make their way out of the pot via the drainage holes. But finally they will die, strangled by the tight plastic collar around their base. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding, I’ve seen this done before.

Planting natives is a simple activity and it’s best kept simple – just remember… green side up!

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, March 2009)

Okay, I concede it’s not instant, but it can be reasonably quick if you do it right.

Anyway, to an inquisitive neighbour the gradual growth of a screen is much less confronting than the rushed construction of a fence extension that almost screams “Stop looking at us!”

Selecting the correct plants to use is paramount. And unless you’re confident and have the plant knowledge to back up your confidence it is probably a good idea to get advice from a nursery professional. My preference is to use a variety of native plants that are well known as effective screening plants. By far, the most widely used group are the Lilypillies, in particular Syzygium australe. Many lilypillies make good screens because they have dense green foliage from top to bottom and grow to a suitable size. So by planting a row of these along your fences you can create a protective wall of green up to six metres in height that won’t infringe on council regulations. Just make sure you use species that won’t grow too tall because not all lilypillies are content with growing to a mere six metres.

It’s also worthwhile mixing up your species selection a little just to add a bit of variation in colour and texture. Maybe that means using a variety of lilypillies or possibly a mixture of different shrubs such as the ivory curl tree, native laurels, cleistanthus or any number of other suitable species. Once again, this is where some advice is invaluable. You may even get a little adventurous and include a few bush-tucker or butterfly host plants to increase the functionality of your screen.

Then it’s simply a case of preparing the ground, installing irrigation, planting the shrubs, mulching, and watching them grow.

Within two wet seasons the plants should be well over the height of your average suburban fence and going strong. And in addition to the increased privacy you should also notice that you have a few more birds and butterflies in your garden, and that can only be a good thing.

Marcus Achatz
Yuruga Nursery

(Published in Cairns City Life magazine, February 2009)

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)