A garden brings in wildlife when it offers what the surrounding suburb lacks: shelter, food through the lean months, safe water and plants that belong to the district. This guide sets out how to design a native Australian garden around those four things, and the common habits that undo the good work. If you would rather start from a professional landscape design plan, Paal Grant Designs offers design packages for native gardens across Victoria, including the frost-prone regional areas.
Plant local, not just native
This is the distinction that makes the biggest difference, and it is often missed. A grevillea from Western Australia planted in Sydney is native to Australia but not to that place, and local wildlife has no particular relationship with it.
Species local to your own region support the insects, birds and reptiles that evolved alongside them, and they suit your soil and rainfall without help. Your council, regional Landcare group or state native plant society can tell you what is local to you, and several councils run free or subsidised giveaways of local species.
It also avoids a real risk. Cootamundra wattle and sweet pittosporum are both Australian natives and both serious environmental weeds outside their natural range. Native does not mean safe everywhere in Australia.
Shelter is scarcer than food
Most Australian suburbs have plenty of nectar, largely from garden grevilleas and bottlebrush. What they lack is dense low and mid level cover, and that shortage is why noisy miners dominate so many suburbs while fairy wrens, thornbills and finches disappear.
Noisy miners thrive in open gardens with tall trees over mown grass, and they aggressively exclude smaller birds. The single most effective thing a home garden can do for small birds is plant dense, prickly, mid height shrubs such as hakea, bursaria, prickly acacias and dense grevilleas, which small birds can shelter inside and miners cannot get into.
Build all four layers
Natural bushland is layered, and each layer houses different animals. Copy the structure and plant in groups, with species that share the same soil and water needs together.
| Layer | What it supports | Plants to use |
|---|---|---|
| Canopy trees | Nectar, hollows over time, possums and gliders | Eucalypts, corymbias, larger banksias |
| Mid storey shrubs | Shelter for small birds, the missing layer in most gardens | Hakea, bursaria, dense grevilleas, callistemon |
| Ground layer | Skinks, insects, foraging and seed eating birds | Lomandra, poa, dianella, native groundcovers |
| Leaf litter and logs | Invertebrates, lizards, the base of the food chain | Leave what falls |
Flower through the lean season
Winter and early spring are the hardest times for nectar feeders. Banksias, correas, many grevilleas and some wattles flower then, and planting two or three species with staggered flowering keeps a food supply running for most of the year. That is more valuable than a single spectacular summer display. Banksia 'Giant Candles' and Robyn Gordon Grevillea are two of the most reliable for that job, and both are delivered Australia wide.
Native bees need the same unbroken sequence but prefer different flower shapes from the birds; our guide to plants for native bees in Australian gardens sets out the shallow and tubular flowers they use and the nesting sites they need.
Water, done safely
- Put a stick or rocks in every water container so bees, lizards and small birds can climb out.
- Raise bird baths and keep them away from cover a cat could hide in.
- Change the water regularly. Stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and spreads disease between birds.
- Give ponds a shallow sloping edge for frogs and lizards.
- In northern Australia, keep pet bowls raised and empty at night, since cane toads are drawn to them.
Planting and soil
Most natives want less help than exotics, not more. Match each plant to the sun and drainage it gets in the wild, break up compacted ground and improve drainage where water sits, and mulch with coarse leaf or bark mulch. Skip the rich compost and manure for banksias, grevilleas and hakeas, and water new plants through their first summer, after which most local species look after themselves.
The things that undo everything else
- Metaldehyde snail baits kill lizards, birds and pets. Use iron based pellets.
- Broad spectrum insecticides remove the insects small birds and lizards eat.
- Loose or wide mesh netting traps and kills birds, possums and flying foxes. Use wildlife safe netting under 5 mm mesh, pulled taut.
- Free roaming cats are the largest garden scale threat to Australian native wildlife.
- Feeding birds bread or mince causes serious nutritional disease. Plant nectar instead.
- Phosphorus fertiliser kills the banksias and grevilleas the birds came for. Use low phosphorus native blends only.
Leave some mess
Leaf litter, fallen logs, rocks and standing dead stems are habitat, not untidiness. A garden swept clean supports very little. Leave a corner unmanaged, keep a log pile, let seed heads stand, and stagger your tidying so there is always shelter somewhere.
Common questions
What is the best plant to attract small birds?
A dense, prickly, mid height shrub. Hakeas, bursaria and prickly wattles give fairy wrens and thornbills somewhere to hide and nest, which matters more to them than nectar.
Do native gardens need less water?
Plants local to your district generally do once they are established, because they are adapted to your rainfall. Natives from wetter parts of Australia may not be.
Should I feed the birds?
No. Plant food for them instead and provide clean water. Bread and mince cause nutritional disease, and feeding favours the aggressive species.
Ready to plant?
Start with our Australian native plants and choose a few for each layer.
If you have the room for a tree that feeds more than the eye, our guide to koala food trees to plant lists twelve species by region, with the Forest Red Gum and Swamp Mahogany among the ones we keep in stock.
If you garden in a bushfire prone area, our guide to bushfire-wise garden plants gathers what the CFA, CSIRO and the native plant societies say about placement, plant traits and the species on their published lists.
If native food is part of the plan, our guide to bush tucker plants for the home garden sorts the realistic backyard crops by climate, with notes on taste, yield and the plants to treat with caution.
