Wildlife in Your Garden

The City of Burnside is a beautiful place. Part of what makes Burnside beautiful and distinctive is the local wildlife. We interact with it every day. There are unmistakable sounds like the singing of Australian Magpies, the double hoots of Boobook Owls and the ‘bonks’ of Pobblebonk Frogs. There are unmistakable sights, too, like colourful Lorikeets and Rosellas, or iconic Koalas and Echidnas in the suburbs.

If you have a garden in Burnside, you have local native wildlife visiting it. If you’d like to attract more wildlife to your garden, birds and butterflies are a great place to start. Here are a few tips:

  1. Grow some structure into your garden. Including some different layers of vegetation is particularly important for smaller birds. For a large garden, you should include trees, tall shrubs, small shrubs, native grasses and groundcovers. For a small garden, be sure to include shrubs of different sizes and some groundcovers. A garden with good vegetation structure will attract smaller birds like New-Holland Honeyeaters and Silvereyes. If you live closer to the hills, you might also attract Pardalotes and Superb Fairy-Wrens.
  2. Grow indigenous plants. The plants found naturally in Burnside will naturally help attract the local wildlife. A variety of colourful flowers will attract butterflies and provide nectar for them. Beautiful local flowers will help, like purple Native Lilac and Kangaroo-Apples, yellow Wattles or Goodineas and white Native Hollyhock or Rice-flowers. You could plant local Dianella instead of Agapanthus. If you desire a sculptural element in your garden, a Xanthorrhoea grass tree might do the trick.
  3. Don’t deter the wildlife. Adding structure and colour to your garden will attract beautiful birds and butterflies to your garden. Make sure you don’t spoil the place for wildlife. Keep cats inside and avoiding the use of pesticides and herbicides.

If you are trying to attract new birds and butterflies to your garden, be sure to let your neighbours know. The better the habitat in surrounding gardens, the more successful you will be at attracting these beautiful local wildlife to your garden.

The Council typically conducts a native plant giveaway in autumn – further details will be in the autumn edition of Focus (March 2022).

Below: a boobok owl and a honey eater



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