The nature vs. exotic debate

A recent speaking tour in Tasmania gave us fascinating insights into the diversity of garden styles around Australia.

Many gardeners in Tasmania continue the imported tradition of growing an English garden. Settled about 30 years earlier than Victoria, Tasmania has outstanding examples of the English landscape tradition, complete with sunken ‘ha-ha’ walls and magnificent entry avenues of introduced trees, in which baronial-style mansions overlook their private parkland.

Just 50 kilometres from these colonial-era gardens are the alpine splendours of Cradle Mountain and the Tasmanian Central Highlands. This is a unique ecological community that includes ancient Gondwanan descendants, like the exquisite native myrtle beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii), trees, shrubs and perennials, which are found nowhere else in the world. Are plants like these only to be enjoyed in the wilderness or should they be candidates for our gardens?

Planting native trees from high-rainfall areas

The magnificent myrtle beech grows well on the mainland, thrives in the Dandenong Ranges and at The Garden of St Erth, and is currently being trialled in the Blazey Arboretum in Central Victoria. It could be a gardener’s choice for large gardens throughout Tasmania and cooler regions of the mainland. Within 50 kilometres east of Launceston are forests of Eucalyptus regnans, the tallest trees in the southern hemisphere. They provide cover for gigantic tree ferns that evolved 50 million years ago. Australian mainland gardeners (generally located within 100 kilometres of the coast, away from the hot aridity of our deserts) are clearly coping with poorer soils and hotter summers in which our native eucalypts, casuarinas and melaleucas thrive. This passion for planting natives, particularly eucalypts, is almost like a religion for many gardeners and some Landcare advocates.

However, after the eucalypt-driven 2020 summer bushfire catastrophe, there has been a shift in the conversation, opening up a debate of the pros and cons of planting these flammables in backyards and gardens.

As we learn to live in this landscape and the new ecology that respects the knowledge of First Nations people, whilst recognising that the vegetation of this continent has been irrevocably changed by colonial settlement, we need to listen to all viewpoints and move beyond our parochial perspectives.

Tommy Garnett, the elite gardening author and creator of The Garden of St Erth (alongside his wife Penny), once wrote…

“The planting of eucalypts gets mixed up with patriotism and exotics with home sickness”.

Bruce Pascoe has (sometimes controversially) led a revival of ecological and agricultural thinking about First Nations management of Australian vegetation. His poem ‘Kuller Kullup’ tells of the misunderstanding of the colonial settlers of the landscape and laments the coming of exotics. But there is no going back, and it is undeniable that ‘exotic’ plants are important elements of our gardens, agriculture and landscape.

Written by Clive Blazey AM, co-founder of The Diggers Club and The Diggers Foundation.