Running dry in Erindale

Makes a mockery of the whole competition process

Actually, this is how a market operates.

The finite resources of the market are directed toward those businesses that are most efficiently able to use said resources.

Bugger. I made a principled point of going to Erindale (which is always so relaxing and ambient, with more interesting plants) and avoiding Bunnings. I think Bunnings are contributing to lots of small businesses going under, such as lighting shops, auto places, nurseries, paint shops. They’ve already killed off most hardware competition. Makes a mockery of the whole competition process. In the end the big fish swallow up the little fish. I hope they don’t buy Coles.

I planted about 20 natives shrubs in late Winter-early Spring last year, watered them once a week by watering can, and except for two which died, they have all done really well.

Will chuck a few more in the ground over Winter and see how they go.

I think using the drought as an excuse for shutting up shop is a bit dodgy. Must have been a pretty borderline business to be closing that easily. Most other garden centres have done alright through the drought as more people are buying natives or other drought tolerant plants.

I buy most of my plants at Bunnings or from the plant man who sells at the ANU Union Court on Thursdays.

I don’t buy garden stuff often (especially as it seems crazy to plant stuff in a drought), but I like Pialligo. Pick the right time to go, and you can also get cheap horse manure to fertilise your new plantings, and some organic apples to replenish your energy after.

Same as el, we never planted a lawn per say, we just let the natural grasses grow and regular mowing seemed to discourage weeds. So we’ve never watered it – it dies off in droughts but greens up quickly when rain arrives. We also planted our free allocation of plants from the nursery and chose natives for the same reason. We very rarely have resorted to watering them when their leaves began to curl and even then just enough to keep them going until the rains came.

The funny thing is houses around us paid for expensive canturf or that spray-on stuff and all look worse than ours at the moment – both in greeness and patchiness. Native grass rocks!

Yep, I think we collectively need to get rid of our European gardens and get used to plants and ground covers that are native.

it was a good shop too. i bought all my kitchen herbs there.

Absolutely nothing. Much the same as before the drought. I haven’t watered once and don’t plan on starting any time soon. The garden still looks much the same as when we moved in (except there’s actually _more_ lawn now).