Working notes on Australian native horticulture, written from the Illawarra, for clients, fellow gardeners, and anyone learning the land.
Everyone plants in spring. The rain gauge says autumn. Thirty-eight years of Wollongong rainfall records, turned into a month-by-month calendar for planting, mulching, pruning and feeding.
Read the field note →
You can drive from sandy salt-spray to deep escarpment clay in twenty minutes, and yet most plant palettes ignore the difference. What we’ve learned designing across both.
Read the field note →Why coastal sand and escarpment clay want different mulches, the depth that actually holds moisture, and the mistake that starves a garden bed.
Which species thrive in heavy clay, what soil preparation actually helps, and the plants we now refuse to recommend.