Everyday my Australian partner and I spend two volunteer hours trying to fight back against invasive plants in Wilson Reserve (A nature preserve in Melbourne, AU) and the bush along the Yarra River next to the Reserve. Melbourne water has invested a lot in planting native vegetation along the river, but has no funds to maintain what was planted.

Melbourne water planted some beautiful Muttonwood trees (Myrsine howittiana) a very rare shrub-small tree that is listed as endangered. My partner has maintained these trees for fifiteen years by pulling the weeds around them.

To get to this patch of Muttonwood we had to crawl through thick bush along the Yarra River,

This year we walked to check on them and found a meadow filled with poisonous invasive weeds. Red Inkweed, a very poisonous tall garden plant was just about to flower. Thousands of Nighshade with lots of already ripe berries covered the ground just below the Inkweed. Under those we found Tradescantia or wandering Jew which we call just Trad. Trad covers most of the forest floor preventing native plants from reproducing. As we weeded we found native plants like Joyweed and baby River Red Gums struggling to grow.

After a week we hoped we’d made a difference. I planted native grasses, to add to the native plants we’d found. I left sticks to mark where I’d planted them. We also put cages around the River Red Gums that we found to protect them from being eaten before they had a chance to grow.

As I walked back through the bush I could hear the roar of the tractor maintaining the golf course across the river. Many thousands of dollars are spent each year maintaining the golf courses along the Yarra, It would be wonderful if people could donate a portion of that money to keeping the invasive weeds out of the nature reserves.

For more information on Trad see my post Trad , February 4, 2021

Thanks for Reading and caring about our environment.