Garden Myths
Can an “Australian Garden” be planted with non-natives?
Simon Rickard, brings sanity to the natives vs. exotics argument
Visitors to our nurseries at Heronswood and St Erth often ask us “where is the native plant section?” They are shocked when they discover that we don’t have one! The terms ‘indigenous’ and ‘exotic’ have become emotionally charged in recent times. Gardeners feel guilty when they plant exotic plants and pious when they plant natives. Why should this be so?
There seems to be a myth that ‘truly Australian’ gardens should contain only indigenous plants. Perhaps this stems from our concern for fragile natural ecosystems. We are lucky in Australia that we still have some fairly unspoiled wild places. Naturally we want to protect them. Perhaps some gardeners feel that by planting natives they are not contributing to further environmental degradation. But, however well meant, this is no more than a token gesture. There are more tangible ways to help protect the Great Barrier Reef and the Styx Valley than simply planting a suburban block with grevilleas.
Some people view planting exotics as a form of environmental vandalism because most of our environmental weeds started as exotic garden plants. But it is by no means automatic that all exotics will become weeds. Who has ever seen a paddock covered in feral frangipanis? On the other hand some native plants, such as the Cootamundra wattle (Acacia baileyana), have become weeds outside their natural range.
Gardens are not natural landscapes. They are manmade environments, just like buildings, cities or parks. Do we want to try to recreate the bush in urban settings? Some native plants are poorly suited to urban settings. For example, eucalypts are possibly the worst street trees ever. They have poor branch attachment, rapacious root systems, shed leaves and bark throughout the year (ending up in stormwater drains) and are extremely flammable. Yet councils continue to plant eucalypts because the feeling is that native plants are somehow ‘superior’ to exotics. Those councils which do plant exotic street trees are subject to letters from outraged citizens accusing them of environmental vandalism.
This is not to say that native plants don’t have a place in gardens. There are many wonderful native gardens such as Fiona Brockhoff’s stunning garden, Karkalla, on the Mornington Peninsula. Karkalla uses mostly endemic plants (that is, native to the immediate peninsula environment). But this is not what makes it a truly great ‘Australian’ garden. It is the garden’s strength of design, suitability to its purpose and excellent plant husbandry which makes it great. These are features shared by great gardens around the world.
The gardens that Australians find the most inspiring are those of Great Britain. Classic English gardens like Sissinghurst and Hidcote are so harmoniously planted that most people don’t realise that 75% of the plants in them are not native to the British Isles. Most of the botanical treasures we think of as English were taken there from abroad. The Romans introduced apples, originally from central Asia. The crusaders brought old roses from the Middle East. Daffodils and tulips came from Turkey during the seventeenth century. Plant hunters brought rhododendrons and magnolias from China in the nineteenth century. The best food plants are all foreign, too. Potatoes, and tomatoes come from South America. Oranges and peaches from China. Bananas and watermelon from Africa. Surely we wouldn’t exclude these plants from our gardens just because they’re not indigenous?
Gardening with exotic plants seems to cause less moral angst in the UK than it does in Australia. Maybe the belief that Australian gardens should be all-native is tied in with our nostalgia for the bush. Yet despite how we see ourselves Australians are an overwhelmingly urban people.
The best thing we can do with our gardens is not to try to return them to bushland, but to use them to reduce our hefty environmental footprint. Growing our own food is the ideal, but if we choose to beautify our urban landscapes with non-invasive exotic plants, is that really so bad? Planting anything is better than concreting it over! Perhaps as our gardening culture becomes more mature we will look back and laugh at the concept of ‘all natives good, all exotics bad’.
Editor:
England has always had a poor selection of native plants. The nostalgic English forest is an idealised landscape that no longer exists. Entire forests of English oak were cut down to provide timber for the English navy and replaced with European beech. English elm has been decimated by disease and replaced with horse chestnuts from Greece, silver birch, tulip trees, cedars, and plane trees from other continents.
Of the quintessential English trees only hawthorn, holly and Scots pine remain. English plant explorers filled the so-called “English garden” with lilliums, blue poppies, magnolia, wisteria, paeonia, roses and rhododendrons from China.
