Rewilding My Backyard

One small patch at a time

Two months into living in my new home, I’m beginning to realise that I’ve seriously underestimated the sheer amount of time, energy, cost, and patience required for Project Rewild my Backyard. The plan was always to tackle the project one small section at a time. But every week, I optimistically think, ‘this will only take a day or two’ and every week, the garden laughs at me.

Rewind to July 2023 when Dave (husband and gardening partner) and I first bought our dream home. For the five years previously, we lived in a rental property where I began to take an interest in gardening.

First, a tiny veggie patch, three raised beds housing herbs and leafy greens. Soon, a mini pollinator garden sprouted up alongside it, filled with lavender, rosemary, and butterfly bush. We stopped using pesticides and insecticides, recognising the negative impact on the delicate balance of our backyard biosphere. Fast forward a few years, and my once-monotonous expanse of lawn began to morph subtly yet significantly.

The grass soon became dotted with tiny yellow oxalis and clover flowers. The periphery came alive with a profusion of flowering natives in pots, providing a banquet for the blue-banded bees. The veggie patch became more diverse as I learned to grow different types of food through the seasons. Now filled with native stingless bees, a variety of butterflies, tiny red assassin bugs, and lady beetles feasting on aphids. Birds, skinks, geckoes, green tree frogs, and even a blue-tongue lizard—the garden became a bustling hub of biodiversity. I loved that garden. It was full of life and enriched my life in return. I knew I wanted the same in our new home.

Rewilding: The process of restoring natural ecosystems by reintroducing native plants, animals, and ecological processes to areas where they have been diminished or lost due to human activity. Replanting native species, removing invasive species, and creating habitats that support local wildlife.

Australian suburbs have a biodiversity problem, and it's not getting any better.

Urbanisation and land clearing have drastically altered our native habitats, pushing out the unique flora and fauna that once thrived. As we pave over our landscapes, we’re losing the very essence of our environment. But rewilding is changing that, and while the concept is generally applied to public land, it’s something we can do in our own backyards as well.

While the new house renovation was underway, we got stuck into clearing over 100 golden cane palms from around the yard, with a few dozen agaves and crotons thrown in for good measure. Dave and I thought we’d clear the yard of palm trees, do a little landscaping, build the veggie garden and greenhouse, plant some beautiful natives, and finish alongside the reno completion, ready to move in by January 2024.

Oh, the naivety.

I’ve since learnt that there’s no such thing as ‘little landscaping’. Our block is an interesting one—928 sqm with a house right in the middle.

• The front yard has four separate garden beds full of half-dead palms, rocks, and red chip bark and a small stretch of lawn up a hill.

• The backyard is comprised of an area behind the pool and fence with more lawn fringes with golden canes along the fence line.

• A patch of lawn with a lovely old tree overhanging outside my home office. When the morning light filters through the leaves it’s magic.

• More lawn and semi-paved area between the back door and pool – this will be the alfresco in a few months.

• Behind the house, there’s a 21-metre expanse that we’ve called ‘the corridor’, and alongside that, a retaining wall garden.

• Finally, an area that stretches the length of the south side of the house will be home to the veggie gardens, greenhouse, and compost bins.

So, there are six distinct areas to work on. The house is on a slope, and the yard has some flat sections but a lot of undulation, a few steep parts, coupled with heavy, compacted clay soil, and two people with zero landscaping experience. Again, the naivety. Or perhaps optimism?

Over the previous summer, the days alternated between torrential rain and blistering 38+ degree heat waves, so yard work was put on a two-month pause. Then it flooded. Ankle-deep water pooled around the house, leaving behind a mass of gluggy, squelching lawn once the water finally subsided. It's wild that previous owners lived with this over the last 40 years.

So, we had the yard excavated to install capiphon drains to solve any future flooding issues. Then full steam ahead? Not quite. The house reno dragged out until May, draining our enthusiasm and bank accounts. So, the yard sat untouched for another five months.

Now we’re here and making progress. Slowly, but it’s progress. Because remember everything takes three to five times as long as you estimate while landscaping. Two months of living in our new home, spending every weekend working on the gardens.

The new favourite saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

So far, we’ve managed to transform a small area in the front yard next to the porch into something that finally feels alive. The before was a strip of dirt covered in red chip bark. The front porch faces out to a lovely park across the street. The afternoon sun filters through the trees, and we can hear the lorikeets, currawongs, magpies, and occasional kookaburra.

So, I popped a bench seat in the garden for a place to sit and just be. I planted hardy native groundcovers – Viola hederacea, Dichondra repens, and Myoporum – which will eventually spread and take over the garden. No weeding required. Theres a lovely silvery Westringia ‘Wynabbie Gem’ aka Coastal Rosemary that flowers almost all year round. On the other side of the bench seat stands a darkly hued ‘Burgundy Queen’ Leptospermum. Both very much plant and forget once established. The beauty of Australian natives that suit your local soil and climate.

The corridor and retaining wall garden have been the biggest project so far, beginning four weeks ago. We had the professionals build a new retaining wall (because sometimes, sanity and skill demand it). The wall has drainage and will stop most of the water runoff from the property above ours. With that in place and filled with fresh soil, we spent a weekend planting, filling the garden with natives that suit our SE Qld climate and heavy clay soil. I’ve delved deep into learning about natives and what will work best in my garden, all chosen to attract local wildlife and survive our climate’s mood swings.

My retaining wall garden planting list includes:

Taller trees and shrubs along the back:

• Prostanthera sieberi (Minty)

• Grevillea simplex (Banana Custard)

• Phebalium nottii (Kay Bryant)

• Phebalium squamulosum

• Grevilleas (Lollypops and Ivory Whip)—I’m fully prepared to lose these if the drainage isn’t great, but I need to try because if they take, they’ll look stunning in a few years

• Leptospermum (Mesmer Eyes)

• Leptospermum woonooroonan

• Plectranthus argentatus (Blue Spires)

Medium shrubs and grasses in the middle:

• Lomandra confertifolia

• Lomandra longifolia

• Westringia fruticosa ‘Zena’ (Coastal Rosemary)

• Casuarina green wave

• Pennisetum nafray (when I can source some)

Ground covers at the front:

• Myoporum parvifolium (Fine Leaf)

• Carpobrotus glaucescens (Angular Sea-fig)

• Lots of Chrysocephalum apiculatum (Yellow Buttons) and Brachyscome (Cut-leaf Daisy) when I can source them

• Casuarina glauca and Dichondra Silver Falls (not a native, but it grows well in coastal climates and looks absolutely stunning hanging over walls)

After clearing all the grass from the corridor, we had landscapers come in and lay limestone steppers. Dave and I are pretty confident tackling most of the gardening tasks, but some things are best left to the professionals to save time for other tasks. With the steppers in place, we spent last weekend prepping the ground, removing loose concrete and chunks of clay, and laying fresh soil. Now, this week it’s planting the ground cover through the corridor and around the newly laid step stones. In between all that, we’ve been slowly building the veggie beds from recycled timber sleepers I found at a local salvage yard.

For all the hard work, I’m loving the journey. There’s something incredibly grounding about getting your hands dirty, literally reconnecting with the earth. In a world that often feels too fast and too digital, the garden is my little sanctuary, a place where I can slow down and remember what it means to be truly connected to nature (ignoring the phone off in the distance, recording it all to share on Instagram). And there’s pure satisfaction in seeing something I built and planted with my own two hands come together. Creating a place that Dave and I and our loved ones get to enjoy for years.

And with that, I’m off to take another bite out of that elephant.