By Isaac Olson, Nursery Near Me
Mid-October is the sweet spot for planting in South East Queensland.
The soil has warmed, the storms have not started, and anything that goes in now has eight weeks to put roots down before January tests it.
Miss the window and you are planting into heat, which is where most summer failures begin.
So what goes in? Start with the fence line. A year of our own orders from across Queensland shows hedging and screening ahead of everything else, and the single most planted plant was a lilly pilly.
Plant them 60 centimetres apart, water deeply twice a week through the first summer, and by this time next year you have a screen that shrugs off the heat.
Then the colour. Grevilleas and bottlebrush bring the birds and ask only for drainage. Kangaroo paws like the same.
Salvias flower from now until winter, and crepe myrtle is the small tree for a front yard, flowering through the hottest months and taking full sun and poor soil without complaint.
Fill the gaps with grasses and groundcovers. Lomandra, dianella and the native tussock grasses knit a bed together and need nothing once established, and native violet will run under them in the shade.
Two rules cover most of what goes wrong. Mulch 75 millimetres deep and keep it off the stems, because nothing else does as much for a plant through a Queensland summer.
And water by hand, deeply and early in the morning, rather than trusting a sprinkler; shallow watering grows shallow roots, and they can cook.
One caution: English box and French lavender sell well everywhere, but both sulk in our humidity.
Isaac Olson is a director of Nursery Near Me, an Australian online nursery that delivers to Ipswich, Logan and the Redlands, at nurserynearme.com.au.
