Maria & Bruce’s Pasadena story
Location, location, location! As any real estate agent will tell you it’s all about location and this is certainly true of this wildlife-friendly garden owned by Bruce and Maria in Pasadena. Sitting high on the Adelaide Hills face and just below a conservation reserve, their garden is visited by a wide array of native wildlife. A garden with remnant grey box trees has been enhanced by Bruce and Maria’s efforts to create a wonderful ‘habitat garden’. We caught up with Bruce recently to have a chat about his garden.
“Our garden is very much a bush garden. Fortunately, like us, none of our neighbours have any fences – front, back or sides. This encourages wildlife to our garden by providing natural corridors for birds, bats and other creatures and larger foraging areas for the variety of ground dwellers with which we enjoy sharing our land. The only problems with having no fences are the risk of dogs killing our blue-tongue lizards and the many foxes that live in a nearby quarry and predate on bird and other small wild-life in our gardens.
“As we are very interested in native plants (aesthetic value and fauna food source and habitat reasons), ecology, conservation and related environment issues, Maria and I are members of the Australian Plants Society and Trees For Life (active members of a Bush Care Action Group). We are very lucky to live next to people who share our interest and appreciation for the natural world.
“On our steeply-sloping, ¾ acre block, we have many grey box and other gums (about 30 in total) that provide a wonderful canopy for bird-life, shade for under-storey plants and leaf and bark litter for a thick natural mulch. The latter teems with small animal and insect life and greatly assists in conserving soil moisture. We have planted a diverse range of other Australian plants with our favourites being correas, eremophilas, casuarinas, acacias (especially, A. pendula – the weeping myall), grevilleas, hakeas and prostantheras. But we also love our collection of bromeliads and a wide range of other exotic plants, potted plants and shade-house semi-tropicals and ferns – with some giant stags and elks.
“Our garden gives us immense joy and activity. Through the large and extensive windows in our house, we can appreciate our plants and the seasonally-different wildlife they attract. Our neighbours’ homes are out of sight unless we venture outside, so it is all very private and wonderfully relaxing. An aesthetically unobtrusive, elevated deck on the low side of the house enables us to have dinner parties and bbq’s overlooking our garden from a unique perspective. It provides fantastic opportunities to engage with the birds and possums and to promote, amongst family and friends, the concepts and strategies for attracting native wildlife into an urban garden.
“My favourite times in the garden are in the mornings and evenings when things seem to be on the move. In the mornings and evenings, I love watching the Blue wren family groups darting after insects as they head laterally down or up the creek line, crossing many different properties. The bottom yard (as distinct from our top one) - faces north east, creating sunny spots throughout the year.
“Many features have been added to make the garden more attractive to wildlife. Birdbaths prove popular and six ponds with, variously, yabbies, fish and tadpoles. The many frogs in our garden provide a musical chorus every night for us to go to sleep to their music. We’ve had to put up some sarlon cloth over the ponds to keep the eucalyptus leaves and bark from spoiling the water. It also reduces the chances of losing water creatures to the kookaburras.
“All water from our roof is used to advantage on our block, including filling four large tanks, plumbed together. As we are on a slope, we have had to terrace the garden in places but by using timber and dry stone walling, niches have been created for lots of reptiles, including a brown snake. I know some people think we are crazy to share a garden with a snake but we always keep a look out when we’re walking around and our two Birman cats and Sheltie dog are indoor animals unless we accompany them out. The other day I saw the snake lying in the sun with something in its mouth. I went outside for a closer look and was able to photograph it as it was trying to swallow a frog. I took a great photo before it slithered off to its hiding place leaving the nearly dead frog behind.
“One of our favourite visitors is a family of Tawny Frogmouths that choose to sit, stiffly, on a favourite eucalypt branch. Predictably, Mum and Dad sit totally still, heads erect pretending to be parts of the tree while the youngsters that haven’t quite got the knack of that ruse, follow your every move with their gorgeous, big black eyes. It’s great to be able to share one’s garden with another family. We also have a resident owl who turns up in the giant River Sheoak (Casuarina cunninghamiana) right at the bottom of our garden.
“We have had 14 nesting boxes constructed and installed, high in our trees, to recreate hollows for numerous species. Rosellas, lorikeets, ringtail possums, bats and bees have made use of them. The dainty ringtails (as distinct from brush-tails) are particularly gorgeous creatures and it is a sheer delight to see a mother with two young hanging on to her back. 
“We have noticed more wildlife visiting our garden as we develop more features such as the ponds and boxes but also as the native plants grow and provide a greater range and quantity of food. We put additional mulch on our paths and around the base of smaller plants. Hundreds of skinks love scurrying about under the natural ground cover of leaves and bark and the kookaburras love the skinks. Koalas are almost resident in our trees or those of neighbours and babies come along annually.
“Maria and I don’t feed the wildlife preferring to have a garden that offers food for our visitors when it’s in season. We rarely enjoy the produce from our ten fruit trees as it is mostly eaten by birds and possums. It doesn’t bother us for, although it would be nice to have some home grown fruit, it is worth the small cost to have these delightful animals in our garden… and in our lives.”
