Bundaberg Landcare

Bundaberg Landcare Nursery Open to the public Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. 9am - 4pm
8 Killer Street Bundaberg-follow signs to carpark.
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Nursery phone only manned at above times. Closed public holidays and over Xmas new year periods-follow us to remain informed.

The following item is with many thanks to the Australian plant society New South Wales.Grevillea ‘Lana Maree’ is a popul...
21/06/2026

The following item is with many thanks to the Australian plant society New South Wales.
Grevillea ‘Lana Maree’ is a popular cultivar shrub which grows to 2 metres high and 3 meters wide and has a dense compact habit.
It has the same parents as Grevillea ‘Billy Bonkers’ – G. nana subsp. abbreviata x G. ‘Sid Cadwell’ and was bred by Richard Tomkin at Changers Wholesale Nursery in Queensland.

It is a hardy and very showy grevillea making it very popular.
Its weeping habit and ability to form dense foliage lends to its appeal, it grows best in a sunny spot on a well-drained soil.
* It is not suited to heavy frost areas and *needs some supplementary watering to do its best.

It works well as a feature plant, but can also be integrated with other plants.
Useful for growing above other shorter evergreen shrubs it can create an umbrella-like habit, as an added benefit it is known to flower all year round (depending on location), which makes it very desirable.
But always prune off dead flower heads and apply strategic pruning to shape and promote flowering.
I think everybody needs to be reminded of this with Grevilleas, this being where the slower growing native Banksia comes to the fore. This Grevillea may be pruned back hard if leggy and regular tip pruning saves a lot of work in the long run.
It is reportedly an excellent cut flower.
Naturally a great attractant for birds and insects.

‘Lana Maree’– named after the wife of Richard Tomkin.

Gardening with Angus – Grevillea ‘Lana Maree’ profile page
https://www.gardeningwithangus.com.au/grevillea-lana-maree-grevillea/
Australian Native Plants Society – Australia – Grevillea Study group No. 80. https://anpsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/grev80.pdf
Thanks to Dan Clarke for putting this article together.
We presently have good quantities of this plant in 140 mil pots for $10 each.

You know there's something about losing your phone which is firstly liberating- and then mind exploding.Trouble is I los...
20/06/2026

You know there's something about losing your phone which is firstly liberating- and then mind exploding.
Trouble is I lost a lot of photos when I did lose my phone recently.
See I'd taken all these great photos of how we had ripped this tree out in the middle of summer at extremely short notice after a lady advised we can have the plant if we can come around asap and get it out.
She had tradesmen coming who were going to come in and destroy it anyway laying pipes right underneath where it was standing.
So without any watering or preparation we ripped in with mattocks ,wrapped it up in a tarp and put it in on the back of the ute.

By that afternoon it was in the pot you can see in the photos., and it has not even dropped a leaf in that whole process.
So another words if somebody offers you one of these tree ferns or you would like to move one - it's worth having a go because they seem to be a hell of a lot tougher than I thought they would be.

By the way always use gloves glasses long pants and long sleeves as the hairs can be a bit irritating, a mask also wouldn't hurt.

As I've been banging on for some time now we are really getting into these Wallum species.,but not only local species we...
20/06/2026

As I've been banging on for some time now we are really getting into these Wallum species.,but not only local species we are also looking at some of the WA and mountain specimens as well, for they all seem to like this Wallum sand which has the magic ability to be wet yet well drained.
The attraction of course is the look of a Australian native miniature 'cottage garden' using small Australian wildflowers.

But honestly you could even use ground loving banksias for instance in this garden.

We are gradually gaining knowledge every time we trial different species ,but as our display gardens down the back area of our nursery are filling up fast we needed more space for display... it is after all an ongoing problem.
So we had been sitting at our lunch table looking at this half water tank which we once used to trial the sale of water plants.

In the meantime we had put in a bit of a hodgepodge of plants and tried just clay soil - all the time to mimic natural environments such as those out west with the old cracking clays, but that didn't work.

Well honestly it used to look like crap and it annoyed me so much I suggested that we remove the top half of the clay and refill it to the top with Wallum sand.. so we did, putting in a variety of local and other native plants -and they loved it.
Carol suggested putting a light covering of cane mulch over the top and we did so, this adding the finishing touches to a great little display.
Honestly it's weird but there's something about having plants up at that height where you can just tend to them and go and check them all out, maybe it's old age!

So I thought I would put some photos up here to show people if you have a hot sunny area where you can't put a garden of native plants and you are sick of killing the vegies this is a great option.
Remembering of course there were two parts to this tank which originally had a fault in it from the manufacturer and was sold to us at a reduced price.
You would have to plan for it but say you occasionally might move somewhere you could probably pick this up using a forklift put it on a truck and take it to your next place..

Yes raised gardens have been around for a long time but often they are just flimsy pieces of junk that fall to pieces in no time.

This thing will last forever and if you didn't like the color I'm sure you could let loose with some artistic work on the front of it ,or put another shorter garden perhaps in front., after all gardeners have plenty of imagination.

As a footnote remember you don't have to put the best soil in the bottom half ,it was half-filled with old orange clay before we put the sand in.
You could always put a good 10 centimeters of good compost in between the two, the thing is the clay holds the water longer but it does drain out in the end as we do have drain holes in the bottom.

Anyway hope this inspires people who may have one of those difficult little areas which needs a bit of colour.
With regard watering -once a week if that.

You have just got to wonder with regard scar trees and particularly very old trees with possible scars -especially when ...
20/06/2026

You have just got to wonder with regard scar trees and particularly very old trees with possible scars -especially when they are all roughly in a line over about 150 metres.
Thanks to Bob for his observation on this one.
Really we can only ever surmise what these may mean, but it seems a bit of a coincidence to me when you do see this .
Perhaps a boundary marker carried on over the centuries, perhaps where significant meetings are held and of course with regard hollows they were often used for the placement of bones.
What I would term the most recent scar tree has one scar on either side (that is the shallow cuts) and I don't think this would be for a shield, generally the indigenous would never risk harming a tree by taking two pieces off one tree so close at the same time.. so although they look like they were done together they were probably done decades apart.
You will also see a smaller tree here with two unusual scars, and this is what I'm talking about in the commentary with regards sometimes young trees were marked when they were young sometimes even saplings then they grew into large trees.. we have got to consider many things when we make judgments on these markings.
For instance sometimes in the bush you will see where two small trees were tied together or crossed over.. they then grow together for hundreds of years to form unusual shapes... again what meaning this meant we will never know.
We are all participating in conjecture here.

On the subject I have added some photos here of what is the best book on indigenous practices and life in Queensland that I have ever come across.
Created by Constance Campbell Petrie from Diaries of Tom Petrie 1837.
Read this and you will be amazed at the depth of knowledge as only one who has lived and mixed with the indigenous from a small child to adulthood could accrue. If I'm not mistaken I believe we still have these books for sale at our nursery just ask at the counter and show them this post I believe they are in the region of $50 and would make an excellent gift.

Bob roams far and wide in Bingera National Park and if anyone has seen his posts you will note that he found this scatte...
20/06/2026

Bob roams far and wide in Bingera National Park and if anyone has seen his posts you will note that he found this scattering of very tall grass trees off the beaten track amongst a large colony of Xanthorrhoea fulva common name Wallum grass trees, remembering this species has no trunks so they are the low ones in the photos.
Therefore according to the plant listing these 'tallies' would be Xanthorrhoea Johnsonii with an age somewhere between 600 and 800 years plus .
Therefore we able to clearly determine that this is untouched vegetation and existed pre white man.
Although we have number of these plants in tubes at our nursery we are growing some into larger pots, because of course it is rather disappointing looking at these two strands of what appears grass and wondering how long it's going to take to get to have foliage at least looking something like that of the fulvas .
But years ago on this page I did a post on these plants and from tube stock to flowering mine took about three and a half years .
So don't despair after the first year and a half they really get moving.
However we're not going to promise miracles because you'll be lucky to get a trunk of more than 20 centimeters in your life time, but still they are a beautiful looking plant with the fronds waving in the breeze sporting a large flower spike.
As the guru Bill McDonald advises the rule of thumb with plants is 'grow slow live long'
As a bit of a sidebar here - I have put up photos of plants which have been attacked by something ., this is due to kangaroos pulling at then eating the young tender white shoots of the leaves in the of the plant this has been observed by our VP during times of drought where the kangaroos will really get into these grass trees as a emergency food source. This however is usually not a common occurrence and this is the first time I've seen it in the bush .

Our nursery manager Carol is always on the lookout for interesting plants especially from Western Australia and thus we ...
19/06/2026

Our nursery manager Carol is always on the lookout for interesting plants especially from Western Australia and thus we now have Leucophyta brownii or Cushion bush on range.
This is a great tough shrub for difficult areas and has silvery grey stems with tiny leaves, and round umbels of silver to pale gold flowers in summer.
As you can see by its natural habitat it is great for coastal sites as it resists wind and salt spray and although it can be pruned to shape it naturally grows into a neat bun shaped plant.. so why would you.
The plant comes from the Daisy family Asteracea, generally growing to between 1 and 1.2 meters, this a perennial plant.
I don't think it gets more adaptable than a plant which is happy to live in soil with a ph that can vary between Acid
and Alkaline.
Soil Type - Sandy, Loamy, Sandy loam, Clay loam, Saline, poor soils.
Dry well drained soil is the go but this plant can also tolerate moist /moderate drainage and we are presently trialing them on Wallum sand.
We often choose these plants from the coastal areas of Western Australia which may slightly mimic our own for as everybody knows plants from Central Western Australia are usually hard to grow.
Leucophyta is a plant genus which is endemic to Australia and was first formally described by botanist Robert Brown in 1818, hence the name.
I know we are presently low in stock so inquire by phone first whether stock is available.

This magnificent specimen of a White mahogany must be in the region of 500 years old plus, growing on poor soil which in...
16/06/2026

This magnificent specimen of a White mahogany must be in the region of 500 years old plus, growing on poor soil which in the surrounds was quite damp even in winter, it sitting slightly higher than the surrounding areas.
Eucalyptus latisinensis is a species of tree that is endemic to Queensland. It has rough, fibrous to stringy bark, lance-shaped to curved adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven to eleven or more, white flowers and shortened spherical to hemispherical fruit.
Eucalyptus latisinensis typically grows to a height of 18 m (59 ft) and forms a lignotuber.
Eucalyptus latisinensis was first formally described in 1999 by the botanist Kenneth Hill from a specimen he collected from near Lowmead in 1996.
The description was published in the journal Telopea.
The specific epithet (latisinensis) is derived from the Latin words latus meaning "broad" or "wide" and sinus meaning "a bay" with the ending ensis indicating place of origin, referring to the distribution of this species near Wide Bay.
Eucalyptus latisinensis is part of the White mahogany group as recognised by Ken Hill. Others in the group include E. acmenoides, E. mediocris, E. carnea, E. apothalassica, E. helidonica, E. psammitica and E. umbra.
Thanks to Inaturalist for this information.

Sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find trees that just don't seem to belong and this group of Syncarpia glomulifera...
14/06/2026

Sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find trees that just don't seem to belong and this group of Syncarpia glomulifera or Turpentine trees were standing as a group in a isolated patch amongst some Melaleuca cheelii.
They were on a slight incline but there was a good amount of moisture around which is a bit unusual because these trees are usually to be found on very well drained areas often sandy.
They are quite difficult to grow which is a shame because there should be a lot more of these tall stately trees planted., I just love the things and if you see their relatives S.hillii on Kgari you will too.

This next tree is a iteration of the Goodwood gum Eucalyptus hallii, which only grows in this small area of Queensland ....
14/06/2026

This next tree is a iteration of the Goodwood gum Eucalyptus hallii, which only grows in this small area of Queensland .,what first appeared to be a 'pregnant' bump is actually a large limb growing at a low level on the trunk when viewed from the opposite side.
Judging by the amount of claw marks on the trunks of these trees they seem extremely popular for some reason ,perhaps they also have abundant nectar in the flowering season , indeed many of these very old trees had some good hollows for the small gliders. These are a beautiful large tree which grows in very difficult Wallum areas.

Address

8 Killer Street, Norville
Bundaberg, QLD
4670

Opening Hours

Wednesday 9am - 4pm
Thursday 9am - 4pm
Friday 9am - 4pm

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+61466884128

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