Select Page

My Indigenous Garden at Mornington

On a cliff-top block at Mornington I have been creating for several years a garden entirely made up of plants indigenous to the area. This area is classified at Coastal Headland Scrub, a slightly unprepossessing name. These plants have their own austere beauty, and a cliff-top garden on this part of the peninsula, made up entirely of this one Ecological Vegetation Class (EVC), is unusual if not unique. It is a botanical garden. But at the same time, my design attempts to create an apparently unkempt piece of bush which is both a magical wild space for my grandchildren to play in and an aesthetically pleasing and satisfying garden space for adults. It is also an attempt to illustrate something which is a hobby-horse of mine as an environmentalist, that it is not necessary rip out nearly all the indigenous plants in a location in order to make a garden.