Swan River Revegetation – Bank stabilisation

Sustainable Outdoors has recently been working for the City of Swan to revegetate several banks along the Swan River in Viveash. The importance of this work was to protect the bank from eroding away due to the increased boat traffic on the river. The bank was reshaped using extra soil to decrease its gradient and a layer of erosion matting and coir logs to prevent the sand from washing away. After the restructuring had been done it was heavily planted with wetland sedges.

On the upper land areas Melaleucas were planted with our specially design planting auger. As seen in the pictures below water collects around the base of each plant. The compaction down below is broken to approximately 30cm and any weeds or weed seeds on the surface get scrapped away.

Our planting machine can increase planting speed reducing labour costs, clear weeds with no chemicals, break compaction and create water holding wells around each plant. It is also very practical to use this in areas that have been mulched, sandy soils and even clay.

Kulcha – Balcony Garden

Sustainable Outdoors proudly supports Kulcha by installing a balcony garden. Kulcha is an arts organisation specialising in fostering, developing and promoting world cultures through multicultural arts in Western Australia. The idea was to create a garden that promoted the multicultural connections integral to Kulcha through using both native Australian and exotic plants.

Click here for the Kulcha website

Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta

“Art work by Tim Darby from (The Painted Fish)”

The Hulbert Street Sustainability Fiesta has been another huge success this year attracting many thousand people to this truly amazing community organised event. The organisers Shani Graham and Tim Darby from The Painted Fish have brought together the residents of Hulbert street, sustainably focussed businesses, demonstrations and fun activities with a spice of local food and music.

The Fiesta is a celebration of sustainable living and community, the street boasts over 60% of its residents growing organic food at home and 25% produce their own energy from solar power. The Painted Fish was open as part of the Australian Open Garden Scheme along with many of the other homes in the street to show off their art studios and sustainable life styles.

Sustainable Outdoors promoted the idea of verge gardens as an alternative to grass as it saves water and beautifies the street. Native plants make the prefect aesthetically appealing alternative with a huge range of ground covers, grasses and small shrubs.

Mulch, mulch, mulch

Mulching is one of the most important aspects of gardening in Western Australia, without it your wasting your time.

Just imagine how hard it would be to live in baking hot desiccated sand, just like running over the hot sand to the beach without shoes. The surface temperature can be quite extreme, which is just sucking the moisture and life out of your garden.

Mulch serves two purposes, the first to provide an insulating layer over the soil and secondly, to feed the soil. The top 50% of the mulch provides the insulation and the lower will become a humid area that starts to break down. This humid area is what keeps the soil happy and in turn the plants happy.

Mulch should be applied as thick as possible or at least 10cm thick. The best mulch is ordinary street tree prunings (and it’s free), the key to look out for is Rough, Course and Irregular shaped particles (black mulch is a waste of time, usually shreaded in shape). Mulch isn’t something that should hold water per se, the water should be able to pass through it down to the soil. Black mulch tends to wick moisture from the soil, causing it to be evaporated.

Free mulch can be acquired from Mulchnet.com. This is a service that connects local tree contractors to people who want the waste or simply GREAT MULCH! Have fun gardening.

Small native garden installation / Verge Garden

This verge garden was created using drought tolerant native Western Australian plants and there is no need for any irrigation system.

Looking through the photos you’ll see the ground being prepared by rotary hoeing soil amendments including Compost, Bentonite clay and Zeolite into the existing sand. The benefits of amending sandy soils with these ingredients helps to kick start the biological life into action with compost, increase the water holding capacity with Bentonite and lock in and store soluble nutrients into the root zone with the Zeolite.

A thick layer of mulch has been added to protect the soil from the hot Summer sun.

And finally planted with ground covers, small shrubs and strappy leaf grasses.

Grass Tree installation

The true Australian bush!

Planting a Grass tree is fun, inspiring and dead easy, but there are a few thing you should know about Grass trees before you start swinging the banjo.

1.

The best time to transplant one is undoubtably during Winter, but can be done either side with good results. In Winter the soil is slightly damp and tends to hold around the roots better when dug up, this keeps the vital hair like connect between the soil microbes in tack, which will save the tree much unneeded stress.

2.

Selecting the new location – Grass trees are an understory species and will cope with either full sun or part shade, but not complete shade. The soil should be fairly well draining, however Grass trees are found in the Darling scarp area which tends to have a high clay content. The best bet is to select a tree from a similar soil type.

3.

This is where the fun starts – Choose a tree and start swinging. Dig a hole about 1m across and depending on root ball about 0.5m deep.

4.

Now your ready for the tree. Before lowering it into the hole, you should double check the size of the hole against the root ball, a quick and easy method to doing this is to use the handle of the shovel to give you a comparative measurement. It’s easy if you have access to a crane to assist you, however this can be done just as easy without with some careful planning. If you collect the tree on a car trailer this can be reversed straight to the hole and slid off the back and simply stood up. This method works quite well, but remember you only get one shot at it if you have a big tree, so check your measurement.

5.

Water in well. Get the hose and start watering. Air pockets trapped beneath the surface particularly in-between the roots it’s bad news. Rocking and shaking can help to release these.

6.

Water for the next several months every day, then for the next year every other day. Adding Seasol ocasionally will help all newly transplanted plants and provide the soil with food, Healthy soil, healthy plants.

Enjoy.