#landcare — Public Fediverse posts

Taking a wander along a local creek, looking for Madeira Vine.

Will farmers ever do anything about land management if it is not profitable? While they are losing a fraction of their land, it's far cheaper for them to just ignore runaway erosion. This will not fix itself.

#bushregeneration #landcare #qld #sunshinecoast #australia #erosion #vetiver

From mown grass paddock, to planted rows, to raging torrent of water and a loss of plants, to a beginning of a canopy after 1.5 years.

*Commersonia bartramia* feature as the main pioneer in this riparian revegetation site which will be used as managed shade and biomass for the mixed species planting they protect underneath them. Eventually some of the species will be thinned leaving the best performers at a spacing that suits the final goal of complete canopy cover and wild understory which is common of subtropical vegetation in this location.

As the site matures, shade-loving species will be added as I can propagate them. Plus more Lomandra, you can never have enough.

*You can never, repeat never, plant lomandras too thickly!" - 'Save Our Waterways Now' Planting Guide*

*"Lomandra spp. Matrushes, critically important stabilisers, impossible to overplant" - 'The Creek in our backyard' by Robert Whyte*

#bushregeneration #Revegetation #reforestation #landcare #sunshinecoast #subtropics #rewilding #queensland #gardeningau

The beauty of #weeds in a young #bushregeneration planting (others may call it #rewilding).

Working in the #landcare industry, we are told that all exotic plants are bad and must be removed, while there happens to be a cozy relationship between chemical companies and the goal of recreating precolonial vegetation types (definition: putting the genie back in the bottle). It's a noble pursuit and a simple goal to achieve; weed=bad, kill weed. Note: I'm definitely not saying that some invasive weeds don't deserve all of our ire and don't require chemical control, don't get me wrong.

For the small scale, we can break vegetation types into #successional needs and suddenly they aren't all bad, an exotic herb or grass is not always the weed of a tree canopy when that's the goal we are working for, nor will the conditions be present for it to thrive when that canopied state is achieved.

Plus, look at the photos; it's a concert of life and nothing seems unhappy. A gentle management and our tree goals might get there just as fast as a spray job. Much better than dead spray circles with a chemical manufactured across the other side of the world. At least this has insects.

The #permaculture ethos of "let nature do the work" isn't wrong and one day the landcare industry may see the futility of fighting nature most of the time and that all exotics are worth destroying, naturalised is a term that's forgotten for some. Careful consideration is always needed.

#gardeningau