Plans by government to turn Darwin into another Garden of Eden are causing head shaking and anger in the nursery industry . Little Darwin’s horticultural roundsman, Cyril Thistlewaite , says people ordering plants for major new landscaping projects seem obsessed with “ natives” and other trees and shrubs which have proven to be failures over a long period in Darwin.
Projects coming up include the gardens and areas at the new oncology unit, Royal Darwin Hospital; stage 11 of the Bellamack housing sub-division street planting; tree planting and landscaping at the Coolalinga road intersection ; Sky City Casino landscaping , which includes protection for a sacred site; landscaping at Lyons. .
Thistlewaite says the trouble with the plant lists is that they contain plants which have been abject failures in local landscaping , especially acacias and most eucalypts , in more than 30 projects spanning 15 years.
Most of the specified plants are hard to source, unavailable or not suited to nursery production. The majority of quantities requested are in the hundreds and a few lines over a thousand. There are some plants which are simply not available and some that are known to only seed once in five years . The request for them comes at a time when there is nil stock and three years to go before they seed again.
There is a proposed mixture of woodland and riparian plants- drought tolerant and monsoonal forest plants- to be placed alongside each other. Past experience has shown that simply does not work. This juxtaposition has resulted in landscaping which is often bedraggled looking and sparse , with twisted and mean looking acacias likely to be blown down in a sudden storm.
Our man Thistlewaite says nurserymen have told him the proposed landscaping will not really enhance the appearance of Darwin and provide little beneficial shade for the populace. It is also the view of experienced nurserymen that planned watering systems for projects are inadequate. They say there is a preference to use domestic irrigation equipment which is easily vandalised or damaged
They brand this as “second rate “ watering, based on the belief that the plants will survive without water after establishment, only needing a “good Wet season to get going .” This sentiment , known as dryland grassing ,is rubbish, according to those in the know. Plants need watering from day one and increasingly so as they mature. Without proper irrigation the government’s plans are doomed to fail, say the horticulturists, and it would be better for the government not to go ahead and save taxpayers’ money.
It has been claimed that the Sky City Little Mindil project does not include irrigation and contractors have been advised to hire a water truck. For how long ? How often? Plants there have been specified as tubestock and will be tiny .Watering from a truck would probably wash the small plants out of the ground , with a high death rate. Top End nursery propagation experience dictates that juvenile stock needs to be in 50 percent shade for much of the plant’s early life , certainly after the tubestock phase.
