Native Plants for Home Gardens on Yarun/Bribie Island

An important part of BIEPA’s efforts to protect and regenerate the historical and cultural

landscape of Yarun/Bribie Island is the goal to encourage local residents to include more

native plants in their home gardens.

The problem

In recent decades there has been a trend in home gardens for non-native, tropical, and exotic plants due to the perceived ease with which they grow and propagate. Unfortunately, this has meant a reduction of indigenous native plants and a subsequent loss of habitat and food sources for Bribie’s native wildlife.

In addition, some exotic plants that have weed-like tendencies have become invasive in home gardens and natural bushland further reducing the presence of indigenous native plants in their natural environment.

A solution

In order to encourage more native plants in Bribie home gardens, members of the BIEPA Flora Team (Michele Furlong, Jill Cutting, and Angela Armitage) have developed five handouts for Bribie residents to use as a guide when choosing native plants for their home gardens.

Download and print your copy here:

BribiePlants.pdf

Download PDF • 8.78MB

In this first iteration of the handouts, the following floral groups have been the focus (and more plants will be added to these groups in future iterations):

• Groundcovers and Small Flowering Plants

• Low to Medium Shrubs

• Grasses, Sedges, Irises and Lilies

• Native Vines and Climbers

• Native Trees

The handouts, which can be downloaded and printed using the button above, provide the native plant names, plant heights and other descriptions, preferred growing conditions, and the benefits of each plant to garden biodiversity. The information provided has been gathered and concisely collated through online and book research with some additional input from experts in the area. Future handouts will include information on where to purchase native plants and tips on how to grow native plants on Bribie.

Special thanks to:

• Ben Timmings and Angela Armitage for the initial plant suggestions.

• Paul Donatiu for his expertise and his amazing plant photos that bring the handouts to life.

• Shontelle Cross from Belle Property for her generous printing of the initial run of handouts.