Groundcovers for your Garden - part 2
Our last article on edible native plants resulted in a number of people contacting us to start their own edible native gardens, so we’ve decided to continue on the same theme. This month we have a couple of delicious local natives to enhance your garden and your palate as well as the palates of our native birds. As a bonus you can buy them directly from us at Lennox Head Landcare.
Blue flax lily - Dianella caerulea
Around Lennox Head you’ll see blue flax lily growing everywhere - in full sun and in shade on the dunes, around the lake, in the heath and in the coastal rainforest on the headlands or at Boulders.
Blue flax lily or dianella has strappy dark green leaves, grows in clumps and flowers in spring and summer producing bright purple or blue bell-shaped flowers that grow into berry-like baubles. Both the fruit and the flowers are edible. The fruit has a sweet nutty flavor, delicious with muesli and yoghurt. Aboriginal people ate the fruit and used the tough leaves to make baskets and string. Whilst edible the flowers are more of a garnish with no specific flavour of their own.
Dianella clump but also spread so give them room to move and they’ll grow happily in the village sands, on the red soils or the clay loams in the valleys and they are drought tolerant.
Midgen berry or midyim - Austromyrtus dulcis
In its natural setting, midgen berry can be a spreading groundcover or a small shrub. It grows abundantly on the dunes, in heath and along rainforest verges and will grow happily in any garden. It has a rambling habit, especially in shade, but condenses well with pruning and though I include it as a groundcover, it will trellis over other plants or form a low hedge or bushy shrub.
Midgen berry’s tiny white flowers appear prolifically in spring and summer but they can also flower at other times of the year. The flowers grow into plump white berries about a centimetre across with mauve dots all over them and they make a very attractive garden display.
Midgen berry were popular bush foods for Indigenous Australians and their flavor varies between really sweet and aromatic to slightly acerbic with a gingery tang. Eat them fresh, pop them in a salad or make a midgen berry jam, used in any way, they’re great tucker so get them into your garden but be aware you will have to compete with the birds who love them as well.
These plants are available at local nurseries but Lennox Landcare usually have them too so give us a call (number below), grab some of our local seedlings and get planting.
Lennox Head Landcare, caring for the local environment and your garden too.
Written by S. Web, published in Lennox Wave August 2020.
Blue flax lily - Dianella caerulea
Around Lennox Head you’ll see blue flax lily growing everywhere - in full sun and in shade on the dunes, around the lake, in the heath and in the coastal rainforest on the headlands or at Boulders.
Blue flax lily or dianella has strappy dark green leaves, grows in clumps and flowers in spring and summer producing bright purple or blue bell-shaped flowers that grow into berry-like baubles. Both the fruit and the flowers are edible. The fruit has a sweet nutty flavor, delicious with muesli and yoghurt. Aboriginal people ate the fruit and used the tough leaves to make baskets and string. Whilst edible the flowers are more of a garnish with no specific flavour of their own.
Dianella clump but also spread so give them room to move and they’ll grow happily in the village sands, on the red soils or the clay loams in the valleys and they are drought tolerant.
Midgen berry or midyim - Austromyrtus dulcis
In its natural setting, midgen berry can be a spreading groundcover or a small shrub. It grows abundantly on the dunes, in heath and along rainforest verges and will grow happily in any garden. It has a rambling habit, especially in shade, but condenses well with pruning and though I include it as a groundcover, it will trellis over other plants or form a low hedge or bushy shrub.
Midgen berry’s tiny white flowers appear prolifically in spring and summer but they can also flower at other times of the year. The flowers grow into plump white berries about a centimetre across with mauve dots all over them and they make a very attractive garden display.
Midgen berry were popular bush foods for Indigenous Australians and their flavor varies between really sweet and aromatic to slightly acerbic with a gingery tang. Eat them fresh, pop them in a salad or make a midgen berry jam, used in any way, they’re great tucker so get them into your garden but be aware you will have to compete with the birds who love them as well.
These plants are available at local nurseries but Lennox Landcare usually have them too so give us a call (number below), grab some of our local seedlings and get planting.
Lennox Head Landcare, caring for the local environment and your garden too.
Written by S. Web, published in Lennox Wave August 2020.
