Over the next few months, together with Yarra Valley Water we will be taking you on a journey ensuring you have your very own healthy, sustainable, productive and waterwise garden that works with our Australian landscape and all of its biodiversity. A habitat for us, and a habitat that is significant to our locality, our culture, and helps to provide for our flora and fauna.

Lets get started with some early winter tips on how you can work with nature in your space through the early cold snap. Remember don’t stop now just because the weather has taken a downward turn, now’s the time to make the most of the soft soil and prepare for the sunnier months

Get natural this winter

How are you saving water?

• After summer when your soil has been dry for an extended period, it can become water-repellent (hydrophobic), even after heavy rains. Look for water pooling on the surface, which can be fixed with a natural seaweed-based additive to help it along.

• When the rain is pouring down, how much of it are you collecting to get you through the hotter months, to give the garden a well-earned drop when its really needed? Winter is a time with higher rainfall, ensure your irrigation is switched off. Watering your plants with irrigation over the colder months is unnecessary and excessive.

• With rain comes weeds. Make sure you remove weeds before they mature and set seed. Weeding by hand can give an effective result. Be careful to remove roots and all and use garden hoes or tillers for larger areas.

Want to warm up over winter?

• From a maintenance perspective winter is a great time to consider change in the landscape, whether it be a clean up of the existing garden or undertaking any planting or transplanting. Pruning causes stress and therefor is best done in the colder months. The soil is soft and the plants are dormant. It’s a great time to relocate underperforming plants to a more suitable spot, or replace them with something else.

• With deciduous trees having their branch structures exposed you can easily spot any branches that need to be removed, shaping and reduction of the canopy is much easier during the colder months.

• With time on our hands, consider how you’re dealing with the waste at home. How could you be creating a better system to work with nature. If you’re not already composting, now is the time to setup a better system to ensure you’re breaking down your waste into energy, the best resource to be feeding your landscape naturally.

What do you think about plants?

• Enjoy watching certain native species thrive and flower during the colder months. Some native species are dormant in the hotter months and put on vegetative growth and flower during the colder months. This is evolution in full swing as the natives have evolved to take advantage of the higher rainfall in the colder months.

• Natives will thrive and grow well compared to exotics through the colder season. Consider planting some indigenous plant life and work them in to your garden and bring back some of the local biodiversity such as beneficial insects, birds, bees, butterflies. Plant them now and they can enjoy the beauty of consistent rainfall.

Consider native planting from our friends at Yarra View Garden Centre:
Grevillea ‘superb’  a nectar loving plant thats great to introduce birds into the garden.
Xanthorrhoea glauca will survive on rainwater alone.
Carpobrotus rossii can rely on rainwater alone once established. Once a week when establishing.
All pictured above.

Fruit Trees from our friends at CERES:
Think Apple, Plum, Nectarines, Peaches, Pears, Apricots, Cherries, Peaches, Quinces and Mulberry’s.