New guide promotes biodiversity in backyards
My Local Native Garden Guide is designed to inspire urban, village and rural residential home owners to invite the natural world into their gardens.
Lismore City Council partnered with Rous County Council to create the 40-page colour booklet and Brunswick Valley Landcare kindly provided the template from their original version for the Byron Shire.
The booklet provides tips on designing and planning a garden using natives, and recommends species suitable to plant in Lismore’s main landscapes, the floodplain, midland hills and escarpments. For example, there are 22 species listed to create a creek-side rainforest garden with groundcovers, vines, shrubs and trees.
For the Lismore version we added information on landscaping for water quality in our drinking water catchments, and information on how to look after Lismore’s important koalas in our own backyards.
Local native species are easy to grow, are adapted to the extremes of our climate, and can offer a lot of colour and texture to make your garden beautiful. Most importantly, a native garden will help create connectivity between patches of habitat for the movement of native plants and animals. The Richmond Birdwing butterfly is one example of local wildlife slowly coming back to the urban environment through the planting of the Birdwing Butterfly vine.
My Local Native Garden Guide is available for download below or in hardcopy at our Corporate Centre (43 Oliver Avenue, Goonellabah), the Lismore Library, the Nimbin Visitor Information Centre and the Lismore Environment Centre.
My Local Native Garden Guide – Lismore