I have just come back from Western Australia and have maaaany photos to share, as I am a little overwhelmed by the volume of my images and don’t really know where to start I thought I would start at the beginning of the trip….the first thing (plants) that blew me away. Grass Trees.

 

In the image above you can see a native garden made on a street verge featuring a rather impressive Xanthorrhoea presisii, isn’t it deliscious? I was staying in Fremantle on and off and this was the sort of street verge planting I passed on my way to get to the local cafe.

It seemed everywhere I looked there were the most striking Grass Trees on the nature strips, I don’t know about you but where I live and my clients live these would have been stolen the night they were planted!

 

One of the reasons so many featured on this street was RePlants, an award winning Fremantle enviro-business rescuing native plants and animals from development sites where bushland is being cleared.

 

Behind those massive tree trunk legs lies more rescued Grass trees than I have ever seen!

 

 

However this business is not just about re-selling grass trees, the philosophy behind it is to  promote greater connection and understanding of culture and environment within the community. They have a community space running classes on the local Aboriginal languages and fireside story telling evenings. Some of the grass trees I saw on the streets were planted to enhance the streets cape for the passer-bys and to highlight the importance of  salvaging  native vegetation.

 

Land clearing around Perth for new residential suburbs is still being carried on at an alarming rate, mostly the land is cleared and all the native vegetation destroyed. I was absolutely shocked to witness some of the ill-planned, tree-less suburbs that are being created around Perth…..but thats another story.

 

I for one completely appreciated the re-introduction of such majestic plants into the urban landscape. Later, driving south out of Fremantle I witnessed hundreds of metres of highway nature strips planted densely with large grass trees, so you can imagine how affordable these beautiful giants are in Western Australia.

The other thing that surprised me about Fremantle this time around was the lack of native gardens, I thought they would be all over it, there were a few gardens that caught my eye but mostly they were public spaces or schools, the private gardens featured some natives but rarely were they exclusively planted with local species. What a shame 🙁

 

Maybe the grass trees will be the colonisers in this case 🙂