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Fact Sheet: The Wild Garden

Clarence Slockee introduces some of the wildlife that lives in the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney

Presenter: Clarence Slockee, 02/04/2011

SERIES 22 Episode 08

You might know the botanic gardens as a place of plants - and we have a diverse range at the Sydney Botanical Gardens - over 40,000 species in fact, but we also have an equally diverse range of fauna. We have birds, animals, insects and all right in the middle of Australia's largest city.

The native pomegranate have been planted to encourage a butterfly known as the Dainty Pearl White and the larvae from that butterfly will only eat the foliage from this particular tree. You very rarely see the caterpillars, but you certainly see where they've been. Now the Dainty Pearl White can be found as far south as Victoria and even into Tasmania, so if we have a lot more of these planted, hopefully we'll see a lot more of the Pearl White.

The Buff Banded Rail has also made a home here in the gardens. They normally like the shaded understorey and lots of leaf litter and the animals and insects that live in that leaf litter are the food source of these guys, so don't think of that leaf litter as green waste, think of it as habitat.

Another lover of leaf litter are Blue-Tongued Lizards and you'll find these in a lot of backyards. They're great to have around cause they'll eat slugs and snails and if you want to encourage them, put logs and bush rock and plant some native grasses - things like Xanthorrhoea where they can hide underneath the skirts. But try not to pick them up because they can give you a nasty bite.

Another resident at the Sydney Botanic Gardens is the Tawny Frog Mouth. It is often called the Frog-Mouth Owl, but it's actually a member of the Nightjar Family. They're nocturnal, so during the day, you'll often find them sleeping in trees that have similar colouring to their feathers. And at night, they'll come down into the gardens and they'll eat things like reptiles, snails, slugs. They'll even eat mice. They just sit there, nice and quiet. They're a really peaceful bird to have around. To encourage them you can leave dead branches on your trees, you can plant trees that have that similar foliage and you can also leave leaf litter and mulch around the garden.

Then there's the smaller residents like the Golden Orb Weaver Spider. They do catch a lot of insects - some of them you may want in your garden, others you may not, but remember - what you consider to be a pest, these guys and some of the other things we've looked at today, they're a food source. So be careful of nasty chemicals in your garden and understand that relationship between your plants and the wildlife.

Try and encourage some welcome visitors in your garden, just like we do here at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney.
