r/GardeningAustralia

Mount lofty ranges Adelaide.
Does off in summer and thrives when the rains return.
Behaves like a weed….is it?

My Dichondra is starting to turn bro and it looks like something is eating it.

How can I save it?

Recently bought a property where we had to dig out a foot deep worth of building debris. We have since filled it with Daisys lawn soil and these seem to be going everywhere. Whilst it’s somewhat therapeutic to pull them out one by one it is definitely a never-ending cycle. What are they and how can I get rid of them?

They grow under Pine Trees 🌲 In the suburbs of Melbourne , Victoria. Australia

Would it keep growing normally or would it create a new offshoot and end up looking wonky and crappy.

Went out the back tn and found this looks like someone's had lime jelly and emptied a full nappy on the grass not sure what this is or how to get rid of it in NSW

I’m thinking it’s from mushroom compost I used over a year ago but damn these guys are big. Friend or foe?

I planted egg plant seeds in this area so I've left this, but I think it's some type of weed.

Maybe it's related to egg plant cause it looks similar?

And if so, is that a thing? In my 5 decades I've never seen this done.

It this the dreaded ‘big swinging dick energy no fucks given about you, your family or garden’ onion weed popping up literally everywhere in clumps throughout my garden or do I genuinely just have onions growing? Somebody please tell me it’s all going to be okay.

(Hopefully the formatting works on this post!!!)

We bought our house in Orange, NSW - a 1920 cottage, not heritage listed but in a "Heritage Area" - about 18 months ago so now its time to start fixing up a few things so it can survive another 100 years.

One thing I'm particularly keen on is ripping out the front garden (already 80% done) and replacing it with a Native, Alpine themed collection of plants.

Lots of flowering plants for the birds and insects, some bush-tucker and not a blade of conventional grass in sight (I personally don't see the point of perfectly manicured lawns). A couple of medium sized rocks, broken schist/scree/dolerite for anywhere there isn't a plant growing and a few "insect-hotels".

And while not strictly an Alpine plant, I bought a Wollemi Pine earlier this year for my birthday, named Bob Fossil (+5 points for anyone gets the reference) who will be a pot dweller for the time being as it might get a bit big for the front garden in the ground.

Another thing that people in this sub might be interested in is my attempt to grow Tanglefoot/Tasmanian Fagus from seed. It was easy to get the seed from eBay, but harder to find info about how to germinate. So I'm running a few trials - direct sowing (control), water soak, cold treatment (ie fridge for a few weeks before sowing). I still have a few seeds, so if anyone has other tips or ideas I'm all ears.

After researching for a week or two, here's a list of the plants that piqued my interest:

✅️ = Already Sourced

❔️= Found Commercial Source (Tubestock, seed, small plants etc), not purchased yet

❌️ = No Commercial Source Found (yet)

Screening/Hedge

✅️Alpine Bottlebrush (Pink) - Callistemon pityoides

❔️Alpine Bottlebrush (Yellow) - Callistemon pityoides

✅️Mountain/Royal Grevillea - Grevillea victoriae

❌️Alpine Wattle - Acacia Alpina

❔️Mountain Tea tree - Leptospermum grandifolium

❌️Mountain Banksia - Banksia canei

Edible

✅️Mountain Pepper (M+F) - Tasmannia lanceolata

❔️Native Mountain Currant - Coprosma nitida

❔️Mountain Plum Pine - Podocarpus lawrencei

❌️Australian Caraway - Oreomyrrhis eriopoda

❔️Pale Vanilla Lilly - Arthropodium milleflorum

❔️Alpine Mint Bush - Prostanthera cuneata

Flowers

❔️Royal Bluebell - Wahlenbergia gloriosa

✅️Billy Buttons - Craspedia spp.

❔️Hoary Sunray - Leucochrysum albicans

❔️Chamomile Sunray - Rhodanthe anthemoides

❌️Gunn's Alpine Buttercup - Ranunculus gunnianus

❌️Australian Buttercup - Ranunculus lappaceus

❔️Thrift-Leaved Trigger Plant - Stylidium armeria

❔️Grass Trigger Plant - Stylidium graminifolium

❔️Silver Daisy - Celmisia asteliifolia

❔️Silver Snow Daisy - Celmisia tomentella

❌️Cut-Leaf Daisy - Brachyscome rigidula

❔️Spoon-Leaf Daisy - Brachyscome spathulata

❔️Snow Daisy - Brachyscome nivalis

❌️Alpine Rice-Flower - Pimelea alpina

Grasses

❔️Prickly Snow Grass - Poa Costiniana

❔️Button Grass - Gymnoschoenus sphaerocephalus

❔️Blue-Green Snow Grass - Poa fawcettiae

Ground Cover

✅️Cushion Plant/Lime Lava - Scleranthus biflorus/uniflorus

Medium/Shrubs

❔️Candle Heath - Richea continentis

❔️Alpine Westringia - Westringia senifolia

❔️Forest Phebalium - Phebalium squamatus

❔️Large-Leaf Daisy-Bush - Olearia megalophylla

❌️Snow Beard Heath - Acrothamnus montanus

❔️Yellow Kunzea - Kunzea muelleri

❔️Alpine Rusty-Pods - Hovea montana

Other

✅️Wollemi Pine - Wollemia nobilis

✅️Tanglefoot - Nothofagus gunnii

This isn't a concrete list of what I would like in the garden - I'm open to suggestions (especially in the flower and edible categories), criticisms, tips and tricks (And if anyone knows where to get some of the red highlighted species )

We're on one of the older Queenslanders up in Coalfalls with a full 1,200m2 block. Posting because my husband isn't on Reddit and I figure locals on the same clay might get something out of this.

What happened to our lawn:

Curl grubs ate the root system. He treated with Acelepryn and the grubs died. But then he put Barricade pre-emergent down on the recovering lawn, not realising it stops every runner from establishing new roots. Killed his own recovery. $3k+ lesson.

We ripped the front yard out early 2025. Full soil prep on Coalfalls clay:

- pH test: 5.5-6.5 (typical for here)

- Gypsum at 200-500g per m2 to break clay aggregation

- Dolomite to raise pH and add magnesium

- Volcamine Zeolite at 1-2kg per m2 (permanent nutrient retention)

- LawnPride Under Turf Starter

Laid Sir Walter Buffalo DNA Certified. Cyclone Alfred hit three days later. It survived. Front verge is thriving now.

Why I'm posting here specifically:

My husband is a medically retired vet and his notes about what he applied were scattered everywhere. Different apps, notebooks, bags in the shed. He has cognitive decline from service so tracking this stuff across multiple places is genuinely hard. He started building a little app for himself to keep it all in one place.

I turned it into a real product. It's called LawnSuite, it's free, and you can use it right now in your phone browser without installing anything:

app.lawnsuite.com.au

lawnsuite.com.au

It's got 111 Australian products with real label rates, dosage calculator for your lawn area, BOM weather, treatment logging. Built for Australian conditions, not a US app with metric conversion.

Backyard is still dirt. Waiting on Stampede Buffalo to come out for the shaded 632m2 out the back.

Anyone else fighting Coalfalls clay? Would be good to know what's worked for people locally. Also happy to pass on anything my husband learnt the hard way if it saves someone the same mistakes.