Love Banksia, but not many love a cold and damp climate which then alternates with hot and dry. This hasn’t stopped me experimenting.
The local banksia, Banksia marginata, were once prevalent in this area, but since the goldrush removed most of the topsoil and the miners needed wood for various purposes, most of the local Banksias went missing. The couple that I’ve planted seem to be coping OK, once they get their roots established.
So I planted another one nearby.
Yes, the sticks and the wire. The wire is to prevent rabbits and especially hares from nibbling at the leaves and ring-barking the trunks, and the sticks are in the way of letting the night marauding kangaroos avoid jumping into them. It seems that the kangies are not so partial to plants apart from grasses anyway, so surrounding them with wire is slightly irrelevant – although they do like nice succulent new shoots. But during the night the kangaroos sometimes inadvertantly (I assume) jump onto a plant surrounded by wire and posts, and at other times, they grab and break off branches. A few sticks at least alerts them to the presence of the wire at night.
And another one. This one (below) in the “Upper South Paddock” near to the boundary fence. It sulked there for a couple of years, and was nibbled by rabbits, but after new wire was installed and perhaps the good rains, it seems to have taken off.
Above and below, photos of the one of the Banksia ericafolias. In the image below the new flowers can be seen.
Since these B.ericafolia seem to cope with the cold and damp and the hot dry summers quite well (although I admit to having installed a watering system in this patch (the so-called “North Triangle”) which I turn on at least once a month in summer), I have planted three more in this patch. At the same time, they do not grow all that quickly, but do flower after the first two years, which is pretty good.
This B. integrifolia (above and below) was a present from Shelley – must have been 2019. I planted it out in 2020 I think (I need to check my diary). Last year it lived in a constant stream for 3 months after all that rain. Two other established plants nearby (A. longifolia and Grevillea barkleyana) did not survive, but this coast banksia managed. For some time, I worried that I would lose it as well, due to the many of the leaves turning brown and limp.
But, new growth seems OK – I’m afraid the photo below does not really capture the robust new growth.
The image below if of another B. integrifolia I planted, probably in 2021, where the prunus gave up the ghost. This location is on the slope under the septic tank, so it should have too much rich nutrient for a Banksia, but so far it seems to have survived OK.
Below is an image of the poor B. serrata. Poor, because it is the target of nibbling. I suspect itinerant wallabies in the night, since the wire around it is too high for rabbits or hares. On the other hand, I have never seen any wallabies around the property, so maybe the kangaroos like it. I water it every summer so far, whch it seems to like, but I do not think it is so robust, since it does not grow so quickly… or maybe it gets discouraged by its new growth being constantly nibbled off. This one is planted on the slope in the middle of the “South Paddock”.
The next image is of one of my favourite Banksias, praemorsa. I’ve tried to grow it several tmes, but it likes absolute drainage, and a lot of water. Hence I tried growing one in a pot, and it did very well until I went away for a few weeks over summer and left the watering to someone else. No. He would only come once a week, and in summer, these potplants need watering at least once every 2nd day, if not more frequently, so I lost that plant.
The one in the image below is planted on the “new back patch”. It’s notably very dry and gravelly there, with a swale running along its length to take run off from the back paddock under the hill. Still, last spring when it rained so much, the soil there was squelchy and I lost a couple of plants in that patch. I thought the B. praemorsa would not survive either, but it seems to be OK. So far, it doesn’t look like flowering, though.
