Is anyone else hugely irritated that just about every programme on TV these days is prefaced with the description “all new…”? Even programmes that have been running for years are “all new”, and I’m waiting to turn on at 6pm and see “all-new One News” followed by “all new weather”. When they do it to Coronation Street, I’m trashing the telly.
In the meantime, I’m getting my own back with “all new” grasses. If you were gardening just before the turn of the century (don’t laugh, it’s actually not that long ago) you’ll remember how excited we were about fashionable urban gardens. River stones and grasses really were all new then, and we took to them like ducks to water.
I’m certain that acres of beautiful trees and shrubs were trashed in the pursuit of the desperately trendy dry-garden look which, we convinced ourselves, would be completely maintenancefree and let us get on with the business of building careers and having children.
Sadly, many of those groovy gardens lasted only as long as the grasses we planted in them. Many of the native grasses turned up their toes after a few months, or at best a couple of years, and eventually we moved on. But now, grasses are back. We’re planting them again and this time, they really are “all new”, at least to New Zealand.
They’re actually all-new Australian natives and, much as I hate to admit it, they’re better than ours. Don’t get me wrong – New Zealand native grasses are beautiful, but most of them come from cool, alpine climates with low humidity and loose, gravelly soils, so in the warm, humid north they’re given to random rot. If you’re gardening somewhere in the southern high country, perfect; if not, you could do well to try a little Aussie battler called Lomandra.
It’s a family of about 50 species of plants that technically aren’t grasses, but certainly look like them. They seem not to mind anything we throw at them – humidity, sun, shade, drought, frost, heat, fire or impossible clay soils – and look every bit as good as the locals. The first one I came across here was Lomandra confertifolia ‘Little Pal’, and the man at the nursery was so convincing of its invincibility that I came away with 14 of them – an odd amount, I know, but it’s my lucky number.
I planted them on a bank in the gaps left by my suicidal Carex Comans and they have trebled in size in six months and are showing no signs of despair. The leaves are fine, shiny and very bright green, and they look so good I can’t wait for the rest of the carex to expire. There’s also a dwarf form of Lomandra confertifolia called ‘Little Con’ which grows into a compact, ball-shaped mound that’s good for sculptural gardening.
The next one I came across was Lomandra longifolia ‘Tanika’. I saw it in a nursery and it looked pretty much like spindly carex, but then I saw it planted en masse in a local garden and loved it. Fully grown, it looks like thick, healthy, deep green Carex secta and the clever thing handles both wet and dry soils.
The owner said she’s had it for several years and it has never failed. I thought it was huge but the common Lomandra longifolia, the spiny-headed mat rush, is even bigger at around 1m high with strappy, leathery leaves a1cm wide. It grows really well on the coast in fairly wild and windy conditions, and is also used a lot on traffic islands in Melbourne, so it’s accustomed to urban living, too.
If you’re not too busy having a career and children, you can use it to weave mats. Lomandra hystrix is a big, flax-like plant, brighter green and less glaucous than longifolia, with big, feathery flower heads up to 1m high. It works in wet areas where water-logging occurs, but again, it’ll still stand dry conditions.
It’s painful to have to wax eloquent on the amazing qualities of something from across the ditch and sadly, there’s more. Lomandra is good for stopping erosion of loose soils and as a border, and stops your mulch from falling onto the path. It makes flower heads that are spiky numbers with creamy yellow flowers, and it looks well-groomed any time of the year. It’s such a shame it’s Australian then…
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Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
