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Typographic design by Nicole Phillips
If there could possibly have been a childhood garden activity more exciting than burning stuff, it was going to the dump.
Stuff you couldn’t burn, or fit in the bin, you simply took somewhere else and chucked away. Easy!
I’m pretty sure there was a voyeuristic aspect at play - look what those people are throwing away – but the whole spectacle was intriguing.
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Typographic design by Nicole Phillips
A few pithy comments on one of the most versatile and widespread plant types on the planet…should be able to knock that over pretty easily.
Grasses are used to make food, drinks, paper, household goods, rope, building materials and more. I grew up with a field of sugar cane at the back boundary, and the sounds and colours of the annual firing are literally burned into my memory.
In gardens and urban landscapes we have less contact with edible grass crops and much more exposure to turf and ornamental grasses.
So in the interests of not biting off more grass than either of us can chew, here are a few musings on those.
In Philadephia there have been a number of long-running programmes that convert the city’s vacant, unloved and abandoned lots into simple, clean mini parks. The limited budgets usually only stretch to cleaning up and then installing a low fence, perhaps a path and seat, maybe some minimal planting, and then turfing the rest. This all sends a message that the lot is now cared for, valued and open to the public.
Image: original photographer unknown. Sourced from http://www.cooperativeconservationamerica.org/viewproject.asp?pid=999
To see a bad use of turf grass, take a stroll along Margaret Street in Brisbane. See the mean-spirited fence and inaccessible lawn marking the site of the 100-year-old O’Reilly’s Bonded Stores, demolished last year to make way for a new development.
In public landscapes, lawn can be an unexpected and delightful surface treatment.
Swathes of the light rail corridor in Dusseldorf are lushly planted with turf and bordering shrubs, creating a sinuous ribbon of green through the city.
Some people are virulently anti-turf, and with good reason: turf grasses can be bottomless sinks of water and chemicals, they require maintenance using oil-powered machines, reduce diversity and take up land that could be used to grow more productive species.
In parks, turf can be the bane of the landscape manager’s life: it gets hammered at big events, people take shortcuts across it, it wears unevenly and yes, it requires constant attention.
But what’s the alternative? More paving?
Parkland lawn is permeable, visually cooling, less glary and reflective, softer underfoot, and flexibly accommodates a wide range of uses and activities: in certain public settings it's incredibly successful and undoubtedly the best option.
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ”
Playing peacock to the turf grass’s peahen are the ornamental grasses, including true grasses, sedges and rushes.
The diversity of colours, forms, textures and sizes makes grasses a tempting planting choice. The range of different seed heads, flowers, and colour change as they die back means grasses are generous guests, contributing different things to the garden throughout the year.
The sensory delight is enhanced by the play of light across the foliage and the movement of grasses in the breeze.
Yes, please!
More info
Australian grass seeds for pasture, lawn and ornamental applications available through Native Seeds.
Information on weed grasses in Australia.
Ornamental Australian native grass cultivars by Ozbreeds.
Typographic design (isn't it a stunner!) by Nicole Phillips
1. Coolabah
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, under the shade of a…what? Not a wattle, bunya pine or weeping fig tree, that’s for sure.
No, our jumbuck-filching, tuckerbag-stuffing antihero spent his last moment beneath a coolabah tree. Eucalyptus coolabah is found in riparian zones, like our man’s billabong, and is often wider than it is tall. The 350 year-old Dig Tree, forever associated with the disastrous Burke and Wills expedition, is also a coolabah. My dad really, really wants to see it.
Image: William Blandowski's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, published 1857. Wikimedia Commons.
2. Canoes and baskets
If the dodgy swagman had paid more attention to his surroundings, he could perhaps have negotiated the billabong with less finality: aborigines have crafted canoes from eucalypts for centuries.
Like the coolabah, the river red gum (E. camaldulensis) grows along waterways, and is the most widely distributed eucalypt species in the country. Bark from the trees was fashioned into canoes used for fishing and river crossings, and canoe trees bearing the scars of earlier use can be seen throughout south-eastern Australia.
3. Fire and brimstone
The other thing old mate could have done is set fire to the tree. As a natural incendiary device you’d be hard pressed to find better.
Eucalyptus oil is highly volatile (one reason it’s good for your schnozz and pipes), and bushfires spread via the open canopies, deep leaf litter, and long strands of peeling bark carried on the wind.
On the plus side, most eucalypts can regenerate after fire, carrying their seeds within tough capsules that the fire unlocks.
Image: Robert Kerton, CSIRO. Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons licence.
4. Gumnut Babies
Eucalypt seed pods inspired another classic from the Australian story-telling pantheon: Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. The stories, by May Gibbs, star a pair of babies, naked except for seedpods that they wear like a sort of tough, green beanie. (I admit it does sound slightly weird when put like that). With their mates in tow, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie lead the charge against the big, bad Banksia Men, arch-enemies of the ‘gumnut babies’.
5. Flowering
If the shapes of the seedpods aren’t wonderful enough, the flowers of the eucalypt are a joy to behold. For me, the West Australian eucs are the showstoppers: go to Kings Park in Perth and take a hankie, because seriously, it's a drool-fest.
6. Margaret Preston
Of the many Australian artists who have captured the eucalypt, I have a real fondness for Margaret Preston and her bold, coloured prints. Kookaburras sit in old gum trees, they frame views to Sydney Harbour, and flowers and seedpods fill vases.
Image: John Tann. Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence.
7. Scribbling
The artists aren’t the only ones making beautiful lines – the scribbly gum is a living sketchbook. Whilst there are five varieties known as scribbly gum (E. haemastoma, E. sclerophylla, E. racemosa, E. rossii and E. signata, the only one found naturally in Queensland) their scribbles all have the same source: they are tunnels made when the larvae of the scribbly gum moth burrows between the old and new bark to lay its eggs. You could spend a lifetime trying and not be able to create patterns that exquisite.
Image: Mark Marathon. Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence.
8. Tree of Knowledge
Speaking of trying, the town of Barcaldine went to considerable time, effort and expense looking after its most famous arboreal landmark, the Tree of Knowledge, a ghost gum. Reportedly a gathering spot for striking shearers during the period of industrial disputes that led to the founding of the Labour Party, the 150+ year-old tree was receiving good quality care and thriving, when it was mysteriously poisoned in 2006. This was also trying for the town. In the same location now stands a much-awarded timber structure. From the outside it resembles an enormous box. Inside the timber pieces are arrange to create a negative of the canopy of the former tree.
The lemon-scented gums lining Fraser Avenue at the entrance to the West Australian Botanic Gardens and Kings Park.
9. In the garden
Perhaps the poisoning of the Tree of Knowledge was politically motivated, but eucalypts have somewhat of a reputation for being difficult in the garden. To hear some speak, having a euc within coo-ee of home is a death wish, as if the trees build up years of simmering resentment and then just lose it, throwing their toys and limbs out of the cot and onto innocent suburbs below. Having said that, being woken by the sound of lightning striking a euc outside our family home during a cyclonic summer night, is a very clear and strong childhood memory.
Despite this, one of Australia’s most famous gardens, Cruden Farm, the long-time home of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, is most famous for its entry drive avenue of lemon-scented gums. If you don’t have a Murdoch-sized garden what can you grow? The plunkett mallee (E. curtisii) is a small tree, growing to 6 metres with lovely cream-coloured flowers; the swamp bloodwood (E. ptychocarpa) is a tall tree to 8 metres; and the ‘Summer’ range of hybrid gums have selected Western Australian flowering eucs grafted onto rootstock that enable them to better tolerate out humidity. Check out Fairhill Nursery’s range.
Tips for Young Players: planting two or three trees in the same hole creates a multi-trunked effect, and allows the canopies to grow together and not shade out your whole garden.
10. Holland and Ellen
Knowledge is at the heart of one of my favourite Australian novels. What lengths would you go to, to prevent your treasured only daughter from marrying and moving out? In Murray Bail’s (fabulous, wonderful) Eucalyptus, Ellen‘s dad requires suitors to name all the varieties of that tree growing on his property.
A love song to this most cherished Australian tree.
More info?
The Australian Government maintains a webpage dedicated to the Eucalypt.
All eucalypts are gum trees, but not all gum trees are eucalypts. Find out more about eucalypts, angophoras and corymbias here.
In the blink of an eye we've arrived at the end of another year. Thank-you so much for spending some of your valuable reading time with our little tales.
If you'd like to revisit any particular faves, here's a complete list of the 2014 articles. Click on either the picture or the heading to read.
We're looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks for the 2015 season.
Love and holiday wishes from Landscapology to you!
That's a wrap! See you soon.
The final in our Spring Hill month was this ramble round the back streets.
Read moreRoma Street Parkland, my local neighbourhood park, and a Spring Hill landmark.
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