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Gardening columnist JACKIE WARBURTON writes in praise of lawns, rhododendrons and growing natives from grafted plants.

IT’S almost that time to fertilise the lawn in readiness for spring. 

Dynamic lifter can be used as an organic option to improve the soil and encourage beneficial microorganisms to grow. Sprinkle lightly on to the lawn and water in. 

Our Canberra soils are generally acidic and lawns like a pH a little higher. Gardeners’ lime can be added to raise the pH to around 6-7, which will balance all nutrients and water absorption for the lawn to grow well. 

Garden lime also provides calcium and magnesium to the soil and helps with water uptake to plants. 

Now’s also the time to tackle lawn weeds such as bindi weed, oxalis or crabgrass. Hand digging with a trowel or a weed digger can be time consuming, but well worth it in the long run. Remember “a year’s seeds are seven years of weeds”. 

There are herbicides to control weeds in lawns, but knowing the lawn you are growing will help find the most environmental and cost-effective way to solve weeds in the garden. 

Aerating the lawn with a coring machine is recommended where the grass has heavy foot traffic or there is soil compaction. To do this at home without hiring a machine, use a strong fork pushed in the soil and levered back and forth at 30-centimetre intervals.

RHODODENDRONS are coming into flower and, as an evergreen shrub, they can really put on a show. 

They flower until October and are tough and hardy when grown in the right spot. Like other shallow-rooted plants such as azaleas, camellias and daphne, they all can do with a feed of compost or a little bit of cow or sheep manure now. 

Camellias such as japonicas and reticulata varieties are starting to bloom with a range of colours from white to pink to red. Camellia japonicas have a much larger variety of double and single flowers to choose from. 

The leaves are bigger than sasanqua camellias and make a really dense hedge for a large garden. Camellias need an acid soil and rich organic compost to grow well. 

Good drip irrigation will be required in summer and, although slow growing, they make tough, good-sized shrubs for the garden and are suitable for putting under the powerlines. They also grow well in pots.

Reticulata camellias, which need space to grow, are beautiful with dinner-plate-size flowers. While they can take a while to reach maturity, it’s worth the wait. 

A SWEET native flowering well at the moment is the qualup bell ( pimelea physodes ). Endemic to WA, it can grow successfully in Canberra though it needs protection from the cold weather and good drainage. A small shrub to one metre tall, its flowers are clusters of large, drooping, bell-shaped leafy bracts and flowers. 

If interested in growing a qualup bell, try to source a grafted variety as our clay soils are vastly different to WA’s sandy soil. Grafted plants will grow better in our conditions. 

Grafted natives are a relatively new practice that allow native species to be grown away from their natural regions on rootstock that is more suited to our soil conditions. 

Grafted natives can also improve disease resistance and plant performance.

Most, but not all, natives will still need soil conditions that are low in phosphorus and require native fertiliser. But most importantly, read the label for the correct growing conditions for the plant. I prefer to plant natives in early spring, so they get good growth through the warm months before winter. 

jackwar@home.netspeed.com.au

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