WHEN it comes to re-establishing native groundcovers, they can be great garden plants and your backyard can often be the best place to do it.
Groundcover plants such as grasses, herbs, small shrubs and ferns are crucial in providing a safe home for smaller fauna such as skinks, frogs, small birds and of course a whole host of insects (don’t say yuck, think of them as bird food!).
Groundcover plants are also crucial in providing the food resources such as seed, fruit, leaf and tubers to everything from birds, butterflies and beetles right through to wallabies and kangaroos (if you’ve got a really big backyard).
But wait there’s more, not only are you looking after our threatened native fauna by using local native groundcover plants in your garden or improving the drought resistance of your garden by using native plants, but they also add to the beauty of your garden with their flowers, fruit and foliage.
Planting native groundcovers in your own backyard is easier than in a big revegetation project because the small plants can be vulnerable to weed competition and your input with mulch and weeding can be vital in establishing native groundcovers.
Control of groundcover weeds is crucial while establishing native groundcovers, for example lawn grasses such as couch, carpet grass and kikuyu need to be eliminated and subject to ongoing control through blanket mulching and hand weeding.
Once well established though, native groundcovers can outcompete and shade out the weeds.
The great thing about many groundcovers is that they are easy to grow yourself by either directly transplanting around your garden or establishing in pots to plant later.
Plants such as Native Violets (Viola banksii), Pennyroyal (Mentha sp.), Creeping Beard Grass (Oplismenus spp.) and Pollia (Pollia crispata) are just a few of our local native groundcovers that you can propagate easily through cuttings & runners.
Native Grasses such as Kangaroo Grass (Themeda triandra), Barbed Wire Grass (Cymbopogon refractus), Native Sorghum (Sarga leiocladum) and Poa (Poa labillardierei) are relatively easy to grow from seed or transplant as seedlings.
