Garden Waste Health Check Dirty Dozen Garden Plants
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DIRTY DOZEN GARDEN PLANTS Increasingly, the natural environment in and around Cairns is being invaded by exotic plants, many of which have escaped from urban gardens. These plants GARDEN WASTE are outcompeting native vegetation, choking waterways and displacing native Dumping your palm fronds, grass clippings animals. The following twelve plants have been identified by Council botanists and and other garden waste over the back fence or onto nearby bushland or creek banks is not bush regenerators as plants to avoid in your garden because of their potential to only illegal, it’s also one of the most common escape into the local environment. ways that invasive plants are spread from Shoe-button Ardisia gardens into the local environment. 1. Ardisia elliptica (also sold as Ardisia humilis) Invasive plants can dominate the native Listed in the top 100 of the world’s worst invasive vegetation, alter habitat for native animals, species, this common garden ornamental can be reduce biodiversity and alter the visual found in bushland across the region and is spread character of the landscape. by fruit eating birds and dumped garden waste. Help stop the spread of invasive plants by treating garden waste on your own property or Scarlet Passion Flower disposing via your (general waste) wheelie bin Passiflora miniata or a local green waste collection business. (also sold as Passiflora coccinea) Like many other vines, this species can form rampant infestations within rainforests and HEALTH CHECK associated ecosystems in the wet tropics region. Give your garden a biodiversity health check by: Removing potentially invasive plants from your garden. Yellow Heliconia / Golden Torch Heliconia psittacorum Choosing garden plants that are unlikely to become weeds in your area. The golden torch or yellow heliconia is fast For more information visit: becoming a serious weed of waterways www.growmeinstead.com.au and damp locations in the wet tropics. www.cairns.qld.gov.au/environment Difficult to control once established in the environment. Golden Pothos Epipremnum pinnatum cultivar “Aureum” A highly invasive species in the wet tropics, it is difficult to control and Glow Vine Saritaea magnifica completely overgrows the forest floor as Native to South America, Glow Vine well as the trunks of trees, often killing is regarded as an environmental them in the process. weed in northern Queensland and is currently most troublesome in Alligator Flag Weed the Whitfield and Stratford areas. Thalia geniculata Alligator flag weed is one of the Yellow Trumpet Vine greatest threats to Australia’s Allamanda cathartica waterways, wetlands and Native to South America and popular in floodplains and is a serious threat North Queensland gardens, the Yellow to wet tropic ecosystems. Trumpet Vine is one of a number of exotic ornamental vines that have become invasive in this region. Ant Tree Triplaris americana Native to Central and South Coral Berry America, this popular garden Ardisia crenata ornamental is regarded as an Native to East Asia, the seeds emerging environmental weed in of this hardy shrub are spread northern Queensland. by birds. It can form dense thickets on the rainforest floor. Curtain Creeper Vernonia elaeagnifolia Native to Burma, this widely cultivated Goosefoot Syngonium podophyllum garden ornamental can form rampant Native to Central America, this infestations within rainforests and species is widely cultivated as a associated ecosystems in the wet garden ornamental and indoor tropics. plant. Unfortunately it is also regarded as a weed in wet Brazilian Joyweed tropic ecosystems due to its Alternanthera brasiliana invasive nature and ability to Native to South America, this climb or creep. plant is commonly used as an edging plant and is regarded as an environmental weed in LOCAL KNOWLEDGE Queensland and the Northern Council’s Land Management Officers are an excellent Territory due to its ability to resource for anyone wanting to improve the biodiversity values of their garden or property. invade a variety of ecosystems from bushland to creek banks. Call 07 4044 3044 for more information. .