So what's the plan with all that dirt? Planting, planting and more planting!

So after cleaning up 80 years of commercial nursery mess what are we going to do with the 9 acres of bare dirt?

*Note I am getting a blank space in the formatting and not sure how to fix it just scroll down to see the rest as this is a long one.

It all has to be replanted otherwise it will revert to what it was - an impenetrable wall of noxious weeds. First step after 4 months of intense mulching in my skid steer (a future blog post) the soil had to be sculptured into an accesible and usable space. Then it has to be protected as the change in elevation from the lake to the back fence is 32 metres up over 120 metres west so a slope average of 1m rise for ever 4m of ground. Mountain goat country!

One part of my business over the years was exporting virgin coconut oil from Vietnam to Europe. And having spent many months in Vietnam over the previous 10 years I knew who to trust and that there were some amazing products being produced from the coconut husk or coir fibre. In Vietnam they spin this into rope and then hand weave it into woven mats to use as roads for motorbikes and light traffic. This would be the perfect stuff to stop erosion! So I ordered 2 x 40ft containers of coir logs, coir weed matting and woven mats for walkways.

My son Lewis & brother Ben helped me unload the 2 containers the rolls of woven walkway matting weigh 83kg each and had to be winched out!

This stuff is amazingly good quality there is nothing like it in the Oz market and breaks down in the soil over 4-6 years which will hold the soil in place, reduce evaporation and give the plants time to grow and establish a canopy to out compete the weeds.

I call it 'Wookie Fur' - it is the exact colour as my childhood hero Chewbacca... Anyway the required sediment control fences were substituted with biodegradable Wookie fur logs which saved me about $25,000 in getting someone else to install and remove the plastic silt fencing around the construction site.

So then I started on the slopes... Each roll of weed mat is 2m wide x 10m long & 1cm thick and I got enough to cover about 2 acres. It is very easy to roll out but then it has to be pinned down using a giant staple gun from the USA which is a very demanding job on steep slopes!

The vision for the replanting is to have mostly Australian native bush food plants in groups of 25-200 - all the things I use in the distillery and the Kurrajong Australian Native Foods products www.bushtuckershop.com People will also be able to walk through this area or take a guided walk and tasting to provide unique experiences to our guests. 

So I did a few months research and learning and started planting the most urgent areas first being the steep slopes. Having a love for weird plants is nothing new to me - I have spent my whole life working in bush foods and edible flowers.

Firstly I planted the 'Wall of Cousin It' using Casuarina glauca.

These shaggy natives grow into long flowing spires which look like their namesake - I put about 50 of these into one of the steepest banks so eventually I will not have to maintain this impossible to walk on area.

I put in a bank of Grevillea Gaudi Chaudi which is a local to the Blue Mountains and will cover the area with a thick carpet of crimson foliage and flowers. The thing I like is mass plantings of single varieties this allows you to fully experience a species and really admire it from afar.

Then I started on the cut flowers sourcing about 400 Protea and pincushions along with Waratah's. To grow and sell Waratah flowers commercially I needed to obtain a 'Biodiversity Conservation License' from the NSW government which took a few months but was happily granted by the NPWS on 19th October 2024 our Growers License Protected Plants number is HK2402 - Yay - another bloody license...

They require great drainage so I have planted them into the slope and hopefully they are happy. But we do get huge rainfall at Kurrajong Heights twice as much as at Kurrajong just down the road. This is due to our unique micro climate and being the edge of the mountains so I am a bit nervous but also have some confidence I can make it work - I was also told I could never grow Finger Limes and now I get up to 32kg of fruit per tree!

Here you can see what I call the middle bank they are all on drip irrigation to get them established quickly and thriving.

Then came the dreaded Slope of Death... A 150m long slippery wet slope of almost pure clay which has a 4m high sandstone cliff at its base... The earth moving crew and I spent 2 weeks working on this to get it stable.

I rolled out the wookie fur and pinned it like hell to the clay and rolled out the woven walkway matting over the top to stabilise the slope and give me a grippy surface to work on. There is thousands of litres of water pouring out of this slope every day from natural drainage and it was a very difficult and dangerous job!

Then came the plants choice - It had to be all natives so in went about 150 various (Endeavour, Kings Park Special, White Anzac) Callistemon, Dianella (edible native blue berries) Gymea Lily and various Lomandra and rush species which could handle the full sun exposure, heavy clay and having wet feet.

This area was so difficult and dangerous to plant I haven't finished it yet but Schnoop my 3 toed kelpie gave the work in progress his approval.

I am happy to report 8 months after planting and having been only watered twice only 2 plants have died. The bottlebrushes have flowered profusely and are now 4 x as big! So the choice was correct and I can roll out this scheme to the rest of the slope when I have rebuilt my courage...

 In November 2024 I decided to tackle the dreaded dam bank. Just as perilous as the Slope of Death but for other reasons... This slope was below the original glass houses for the nursery and sometime back in the 1980's they copped a severe hail storm which smashed every pane of glass... So what did you do back then? You simply throw it all off the edge of the bank! This then grew over with 4m high lantanna, privet, tobacco, blackberry, arum lily and some escapee Camellias. Cleaning this up has been many months of back breaking work. But I had a vision... To mass plant this bank with native Kangaroo Paws in all their glorious colours - a 150m long rainbow slope with thousands of them!

But first I had to remove the nursery mess...

Plastic pipes, rusted steel bits and bobs, plant tags, plastic pots and buckets and buckets of glass shards and bits of asbestos. Then resurface the bank with topsoil we had retained from under the entrance driveway. Then out rolled the wookie fur then in went the 'Paws (with more shards of glass out of every hole) and then the irrigation.

I am doing 4m wide x 10m long mass plantings of yellow - tangerine - red - lilac - green Kangaroo Paws here as a test. Eventually the main food factory processing room will look over this area. On the other side of the lake is the Camellias and the effect of the reflection on the water surface is to double the colour :)

The planting will take years - infact I don't think it will ever be finished.

To quote Audrey Hepburn: "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow"

A reminder for every bottle of gin purchased you are sponsoring one of these plants. And we 'aint cheap on our buying like other companies who say the same and then donate 30c to some bush regen company. Our plants are EXPENSIVE and from specialist growers typically $12-$19 per plant plus delivery. A $19 plant I buy from the growers you would buy at Bunnings for $35 so this is a huuuuuge investment (over $24,000 so far) by Wild Hibiscus Distilling Co. As proof I have included our plants list below - Its very long but shows we do what we say and we get it done!

 Planting List as at 20 Nov 2024.

I look forward to walking through this wonderous garden with our guests in the coming years!

xx lee