Welcome to our Autumn newsletter. Hopefully you found some lovely plants at our Annual Plant Sale and they are now enjoying a good spot in your garden, awaiting a bit more Autumn rain. In the meantime here’s some good reading to catch you up on what’s been happening.

APS Victoria Secretary

Our commitment and connection to APS Victoria was further strengthened when member Charles Hrubos took up the position of Secretary/ Public Officer at the start of the year. Thanks for your dedication Charles. Hope you find the role not only a good challenge but very personally rewarding.

January Plant of the Month

Normally I would select a plant that was flowering for inclusion in this section of the newsletter but back in January our unusual Eucalyptus erythrocorys wasn’t flowering. In fact it is still quite small being only about a metre in height. So we weren’t happy to find quite a lot of leaves under attack. Needless to say the offenders were given the squish treatment.

It is still recovering months later.

The Tree Project

At the end of 2023 my wife Karen took up the Tree Project with some encouragement from our leader, Robyn Tyson. Basically you agree to plant seeds of a number of native indigenous species to aid a Landcare group. Initially Karen attended a workshop. Next she and Robyn planted 300 tubes with seeds of – two varieties of Eucalyptus, two of Acacia, two of Melaleuca and Goodenia ovata. With some warm sunny days and twice daily watering it didn’t take long for the seeds to sprout. As the seeds had been very viable we had to do some thinning out to leave only the strongest plant in each tube.

Karen made monthly reports to her coordinator in Cape Patterson. Late April came and we delivered our seven fruit boxes of 50 tubes each to Cape Paterson Community Garden where they joined 35 similar boxes grown by locals there.

The next day all the plants were collected in a trailer to go further to Fish Creek to the South Gippsland Landcare group to be planted locally.

It was an interesting, rewarding (but time consuming) experience.

Mistletoes

Peter Rogers visited us for our February 20th evening meeting and presented a very interesting talk supported by some excellent photos of mistletoes to a full meeting room at Bentons Square Community Centre. Whilst I don’t have any of his photos, our leader, Robyn Tyson was inspired to take a few photos of her own of mistletoes and sent them to me. Thanks Robyn.

Mistletoe aren’t exclusive to Eucalyptus. Robyn found this one growing on a silver wattle.

She also took an impressive photo of a big adherence “root ball” at Devilbend.

February Plant Table

Our February plant table was loaded with some lovely specimens. Here’s a few photos of what caught my eye.

Main Ridge Conservation Reserve Excursion

Thanks to leader, Robyn Tyson for her report on the excursion to Main Ridge. Apart from Robyn’s photos of the mistletoes the photos are courtesy of Jeanette Morris. Thanks Jeanette.

Thirteen of us assembled at the Barkers Rd entrance to the park for a stroll in the stringy bark forest, to search for mistletoe.

We found dead stick evidence, before starting off, but got side tracked by Hyacinth orchid seeds, and then flowers, Dipodium roseseum.

Lee Denis very informatively told us that they are semi parasitic, needing a fungus found in the soil around the base of Eucalypts, and that they are leafless and difficult to propagate, because of their nature.

 Other flowers found included Glycine, Whalenbergia, Bursarea.

Some of us had to backtrack to look at the first Mistletoe, it was the creeping variety Muellerina eucalptoides, no flowers but seeds.

As we turned left along the creek line the vegetation changed and there were many more sightings of Mistletoe high up in the trees. This was the other one we hoped to find, Amyema pendula ssp.pendula, some of the plants were very large, showing great age, with huge central burls. The birdlife flitting about was also as we had been told to expect, tree creepers and brown headed honeyeaters.

There was more discussion about plants that are different but similar, native currant, Coprosma quadrifida and the Bursaia spinosa ssp. spinosa, similar leaves but different flowers, one has berries, which we found, the other papery seed capsules in large clumps.

We were lucky enough to have both treeferns Dicksonia Antarctica on one side of the track and Cyathea Australis on the other. Discussion of trunks, hairy and rough, the frond presentation as well as structure. Dickson fronds, more straight, Cyathea umbrella like. Maybe we need a Fern talk, as there may have been more than these two.

As we entered a more moist section we were presented with a host of more herbaceous plants, we discussed possible weed but it is a Sigesbeckia orientalis ssp. orientalis , a tall fleshy bright green leafed herb with tiny yellow flowers.

At the top of the path turning to go back to the cars, I brought up that “old chestnut” Ozothamnus vs. Cassinia. Again a discussion ensued, more knowledge shared, identification techniques tried. But on looking up my trusty Flora of Melbourne, both the plants we were looking at were Ozothamnus ferrugineus, tree everlasting, larger leaves and rosemarinifolius, smaller tightly packed leaves.

Some other plants encountered were Lobelia, Oxalis, Geranium, Solanum, and the native raspberry Rubus parvifolius.

Another great outing, knowledge shared, new things learnt or consolidated, in the pleasant company of like minded people.

February Plant of the Month

My February Plant of the Month was growing at Cranbourne Botanical Gardens, sadly not in our own garden. It’s a fine leafed form of Veronica perfoliata. At this stage it was only about 30-40cms high.

Prostantheras

Our speaker for the March 19th evening meeting at Bentons Square Community Centre was Miriam Ford. Once again it was a well attended meeting. Miriam’s presentation on Prostantheras (mint bushes) supported by some lovely photos gave us all inspiration to plant a few more of these varied and fragrant plants in our gardens.

March Plant Table

Our plant table was again very colourful in March. One whole section was Grevilleas, (sadly, not Prostantheras).

Here’s a lovely Hemiandra.

This Pelargonium australe has a very delicate little flower.

March Plant of the Month

Changing weather patterns seem to have thrown out the ‘usual’ flowering time for so many plants in our garden. So it was a pleasure to see our Hakea ‘Burrendong Beauty’ start to bloom in March. We weren’t the only ones happy to see it flowering. Karen’s bees loved it.

Thomasias and friends

We were well informed and entertained by Trevor Blake, who came to speak to a full meeting room of our group on the evening of April 16th. His topic according to the calendar was Thomasias but he opened up our eyes to not only Thomasias but close relatives Guichenotia, Androclavia, Lasiopetalum and Lysiosepalum, all of which have lovely lantern hanging type flowers of many beautiful shades of pinks, purples and even whites. Best of all for us was the important bit learning that they can handle living in clay in many cases.

April Plant Table

Those who attended the April meeting had a wide array of flowering samples to admire on the plant table.

Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show

We have 8 new members after the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.

How wonderful the Best in Show, and 4 other Gold medals went to Emmaline Brown and Liam Riley with a native meadow garden. Snapshot below of ‘Through the Looking Glass’.

Native plants were strongly represented, especially in the Up and Comers “Achievable Gardens”- Gold to Mornington Peninsula crew Maddie Holiemann and Andy Sargood for ‘Look Within’. 

April Plant of the Month

Plant of the Month for April in our garden was our well spread but sparse Grevillea nudiflora groundcover with it’s lovely yellow-red flowers.

Remember of you have something in flower you’d like to share in the newsletter just send a photo to our email address- morningtonpeninsula@apsvic.org.au and mark it Attention: Newsletter Editor.

Seaford Banksia Arboretum

On Sunday the 14th of April there was a planting out and mulching day at 1:30 PM at the Seaford Banksia Arboretum.

There were over two hundred potted up Banksias to plant into the now wetted grounds thanks to the recent rains.

The group has obtained three fairly decent lawn mowers now too, a 2 stroke and two 4 stroke versions as well as a heavy duty long grass slasher which works well in grasses over 1.2 M high and is easy to use. We have found that the decline in funds to VicRoads has seen a similar decline in the mowing services at the arboretum and now that we’re getting more visitors and Banksias flowering too, the improved appearances with mown areas is dramatic. VicRoads did return the previous week with contractors to at last mulch up the very large heap of shrubbery and fallen trees we’ve had for a couple of years, resulting in about 30 cubic M of mulch to spread. VicRoads also said they’d be delivering more mulch again but we’re not sure when.

In flower now we have Banksia occidentallis, baxteri, media, plagiocarpa, robur and ericafolia macranthra.

Cheers, Ross Shepherd.

Annual Plant Sale

Thanks to Jenny Bolger, Plant Sale sub-committee Convenor for this quick report and also to members Karen Allison and Judy Turnbull for their photos.

‘Hi everyone

Now that we’ve all had a day to recover from the great effort on Saturday, I’d like to thank you all for the time you committed to making the Plant Sale a success.  Obviously our numbers were down from last year, and we can mull over the reasons for that over the next few weeks, but the weather was absolutely perfect, the growers were happy, we all managed to take home some treasured plants, and nobody had to get carted off in an ambulance!!  

I think we could safely say we had in excess of 460 people attending.  

There were some appreciative comments from the growers regarding the hospitality provided “We felt very well looked after”  and “who made the fruitcake?” as in it was to die for…     I think we’re the only APS group that really goes out of their way to keep the growers fed and watered, so it’s obviously appreciated.

I hope you found the day an interesting and enjoyable one, and I would be grateful for any feedback you’d like to give.  We’re always striving to make the plant sale a showcase for native plants and to encourage people to consider growing them – any ideas to improve what we do will be welcome.

Thanks again, and also particularly to the Plant Sale Committee – Verena Reich, Rob Powell, Marg Rogers, Roo Rawlins – you’ve done a mighty job over the past 4 months.’

It wasn’t all about plants as we all like to see birds and wildlife in our gardens.

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Upcoming Events

In the meantime don’t forget our next meeting featuring Alan Bedggood speaking about native grasses on Tuesday May 21st and our next excursion to Wilson Park in Berwick on Sunday 2nd June.