Gardening

In the Harvey Household

Introduction

I have been interested in Australian native plants for gardening for many years, but the raising of a family of two very active boys put paid to the effort needed for its upkeep. Put simply, the garden went feral.

A few years ago, with my wife enjoying being a homemaker full-time and needing a challenge, we (really she!) decided to remodel the front of our property. The front is almost complete, with about 600 Australian native plants of over 400 different species or forms having been planted. The first seasons of reward are ours as the flowers appear.

The back garden is twice the area of the front at 1/4 acre and contains a further 400 shrubs, though this time we have chosen to do "group" plantings with up to 10 of each species in a group (although the daisies are additional and counted in 100s).

If you want a list of what we have (and a number of photographs as well), go to Lorraine's Garden

What is our garden looking like?
Judge for yourself: Here are a few photographs of our garden in various stages of development, and of the beautiful results.

Getting rid of the clay. What a hole!	Preparing the ground. Backbreaking work!
Results at 15 months are obvious!	Alyogyne heugelii - mauve variety
Pimelea rosea	Banksia praemorsa in full bloom
Carpobrotus modestus (pigface) flower	Hibiscus heterophyllus - apricot variety
Photographs by He	Gardening by She

Can you correctly spell Passiflora cinnabarina?

If you can't, then don't get disheartened, because help is at hand. Remembering the botanical names of thousands of plants is very difficult. Getting the spelling correct is almost impossible. A chance comment in an on-line GumNuts magazine prompted me to further develop an idea I had. Why not have a dictionary of native botanical names that works with Microsoft Word or other word processors? It would be a great help for She, the gardener, so it started with about 5000 words.

A few months later, I had available a dictionary containing about 17,000 words specifically relating to botanical names of Australian native flora. It has been incrementally developed since then, now containing about 23,600 genera and species names. This version covers about 99% of the expected usage.

Following requests from users of these dictionaries, I have added another dictionary which covers over 400 family names for Australian flora. As a result, those family names which were already included in the other files have been transferred to the new dictionary. I have also added a reference dictionary covering 270 families of other non-Australian flora.

The full dictionary thus actually consists of seven files:

Dictionary (Filename)	Last Update	Entries	Description of Dictionary Contents.
Natives1.Dic	29/SEPT/2005	5322	Standard dictionary with the most commonly encountered botanical names. This file will be adequate for most users.
Natives2.Dic	29/SEPT/2005	4044	Dictionary extension containing less likely names. Many of these you will only encounter occasionally.
Natives3.Dic	29/SEPT/2005	5269	Dictionary extension containing the least likely encountered names. You'll almost need to be a botanist to come across these!
Natives4.Dic	29/SEPT/2005	4743	Dictionary extension containing new additions. Use with caution: Some of these entries are suspect - they may be mis-spelt words!
Natives5.Dic	07/FEB/2006	4210	Another Dictionary extension containing new additions. Includes the unique proposed Racosperma species names. Use with caution: Some of these entries are suspect - they may be mis-spelt words!
Families.Dic	29/SEPT/2005	424	Additional dictionary containing the family names of Australian flora. This can be used independently of the names dictionaries.
Families2.Dic	7/MAY/2003	275	Additional dictionary containing the family names of non-Australian flora. This can also be used independently of the names dictionaries.

Edition 13.0 (07/FEBRUARY/2006) is free here for you to download, just click on this link: Natives.zip (108KB) to commence download.
The zipped file includes a brief description of how to install the dictionaries on a range of word processors.

The botanical genera, species and family names have been, wherever possible, checked against the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) lists, and where conflicting spellings exist, the ANBG spelling has been used.
If you notice any omissions or errors, please email me and I will see what I can do.

And just what is Passiflora cinnabarina?
Its common name is Red Passionflower. It is a vigorous climber with an unusual flower about 8cm across, ideally suited for trellis and open fences.

pass

Passiflora cinnabarina

Genus/Family Cross Reference Table

Now Available - a cross reference table showing the genus/family association for over 5000 Australian Native Plant genera. This table was developed to improve the performance of my free Australian Native Plants Selector, but can also be used independently if you only want a table of association.

It is an alphabetically arranged list of genera with TAB-delimited associated family. It can be easily edited or processed to suit your own requirements, such as finding a list of all genera in each family or extracting and compacting all families. If printed as a genus/family lookup table it will produce a document of approximately 80 pages.

Edition 4.0 (31/MARCH/2006) is free here for you to download, just click on this link: GenusFam.zip (33KB) to commence download.

Native Plants Selector

Do you want to find out just what Australian Native Plant suits your requirements?
Download my free Australian Native Plants Selector for PCs.

Howard

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	You can contact me at hharvey@sa.chariot.net.au

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Gardening In the Harvey Household

Introduction

Can you correctly spell Passiflora cinnabarina?

Native Plants Selector

Gardening

In the Harvey Household