Caring Community - Our Natural World

Corymbia - Photo by Isis Planting, position and water for a home that holds its warmth in winter and its cool in summer. A house is not a box that sits beside a garden. It sits inside one, and the garden is always working on the air around it, whether we notice or not. A tree shades a wall. A vine cools a veranda. A pond changes the temperature of the breeze that reaches the back door. Most of the guides written about this are written for the northern hemisphere, where the ad

There are infinite stories being shared by the leaves and sung by the birds that visit our gardens. Native plants are the unsung heroes of our landscapes, the original inhabitants that have thrived here long before we arrived. When we choose to plant native, we are not just gardening; we are weaving ourselves into the fabric of the land’s history and future. Let me take you on a journey through the many benefits of native plants, where every leaf and petal tells a tale of re

Hibiscus sabdariffa Seedling - Photo by Isis I have just potted on Hibiscus sabdariffa - Rosella seedlings into forest tubes. This one is a little different from most of what I grow, so I want to say it plainly at the start. Hibiscus sabdariffa, the plant many people know as Rosella or Roselle, is not native to Australia. It is not a bush food, but it is a beautiful plant with edible fleshy red calyxes. Why a non-native has a place in the nursery This species of Hibiscus has

In Full Bloom - Photo by Isis A gift guide from the nursery, sorted by what you want to spend Christmas has a way of quietly becoming a spending exercise. Trolleys full of things nobody asked for, and spending that starts to feel like an obligation. The gifts I keep coming back to are the ones that cost less than people expect and mean more than they cost. A guide that turns a backyard into habitat. Four native plants chosen for one particular garden. A jar of something hones

A small yellow flower can tell you more about the season than a calendar can. Bulbine bulbosa, often called Golden lily or Native leek, is one of those plants that asks us to look more closely at timing, soil, food, and insects all at once. It flowers from Late Winter through Spring, sending up slender stems topped with clear yellow blooms when many people still think the cold season has not quite let go. For people connecting to country through plants, Bulbine bulbosa is a

A flower is never just a flower. In a healthy ecosystem, it is a meeting place, a food source, a signal, and the start of the next generation of plants. Across Australia, native pollinators keep bushland, wetlands, grasslands, forests, and home gardens renewing themselves. Honeyeaters push their faces into blossoms. Native bees shake pollen loose with their bodies. Beetles, moths, flies, and wasps visit flowers that many people overlook.

The first episode of What the Forest Shares. An insight received from the elder of the coastal forest — on language, living systems, and what the oldest presences carry.

Einadia hastata - Berry Saltbush Einadia hastata - Photo By Isis Some plants carry a kind of quiet authority. Einadia hastata he Berry Saltbush is one of those. It grows low and wide, closer to the ground than you might expect, and it spends its time doing something that takes most ornamental plants years to notice: offering itself, in multiple directions, to almost everyone who passes. Lizards. Insects. Pollinators. The dry summer. A garden trying to hold moisture in coasta

When we think of gardening, we often picture rows of flowers or vegetables basking in the sun. But Talulahhub -Natures gardening solutions invite us to see beyond the surface. It’s about weaving sustainability into every seed we plant and every drop of water we save. We have the ability to create with the energetic streams of nature that continually sows its seeds, shares and breathes, creating life itself.

I often venture into a nearby coastal forest, to learn about myself as a human- being that is connected and an integral part of an ecosystem. In this beautiful coastal forest, there are many elder trees, however one of those elder trees began to speak. It was a turning point in my journey in understanding what conservation truly is, how we often, even with the best of intentions, can be out of alignment, and misunderstand what our participation is as one part of a vast intric

A wild orchid can stop a bushwalk in its tracks. One moment the track is all sand, banksia leaves and wind-shaped scrub. The next, a flower no taller than a matchstick appears at ankle height, patterned like an insect, a shell, a bird, or something from a fairy tale. Australia’s coastal forests and heathlands are rich places for orchid hunting. They bring together sandy soils, winter rain, salt-laden winds, low shrubs, stringybarks, banksias, grass trees, sedges, fungi, inse

Mirbelia rubiifolia photo by Isis I love walking through this majestic coastal forest. It is a place I have begun to know well and more than know, to feel the communication within it. The plants are buzzing, The flowering season has begun with a variety of orchids still to rise and shine from their slumber. The native bees are shifting our of hibernation; the Teddy Bear bees, the Blue Banded bees will soon come out to meet and greet the blooms once again. The Sweat bees alrea

THE GIFTS WITH MEANING COLLECTION IS BUILT AROUND THIS TIME OF YEAR. Sun & Skin Nurturing Trio There is a particular quality to the light in early Spring. It comes in at a different angle, softer, more direct at the same time and something in me responds to it before I've consciously decided to. I find myself reaching for things. Clearing out, wanting to give something to the people I care about. It happens every year around now, and every year I think: this is what gifting

A Spring Native Green Juice - Mentha australis, Prostanthera incisa, and the return to the garden Mentha australis - photo by Isis The River Mint was the first to say Spring was coming. I hadn't thought of it as a seasonal marker before, but this year it was unmistakable. Mentha australis, low growing, spreading quietly across the damp edge of the nursery, had put out a flush of new growth weeks before anything else moved. Soft and bright and insistent, yet accommodating to a

I brush a leaf and the whole morning shifts. That's what Prostanthera incisa does. You don't need to wait for the flowers, the plant communicates long before they arrive. A single pass of a finger across those small, deeply cut leaves and the air fills with something sharp and clean and green, a mintiness that isn't soft or sweet but immediate. Present. The Cut-leaf Mint Bush doesn't hold back.

Spring arrives quietly here. Not with fanfare but with a shift — a loosening in the light, a particular quality of warmth in the morning that wasn't there a week ago. The birds know it before the calendar does. And the plants, as always, are already ahead of everything. I've been thinking lately about two things that I don't think of as separate: what we eat and what we put on our skin. Both are acts of care. Both are relationships with the living world.

Spring is here, and I wanted to share something I created especially for this season. Seasons Beyond 4 is a short meditation, and I mean short, intentionally so. The idea is that you don't set time aside for it. You do it before your morning tea, before the day begins, and then you carry that quality of presence with you as you move through everything that follows. We experience so much more than four seasons when we truly pay attention. This meditation is an invitation i

Exploring Seaweed, Compost and the Living Soil Kelp Forest - Photo by Vilkass Pixabay How marine biomass might help regenerate soil, without taking more from the sea. The ocean has always been a fascination to me, the relationship between the ocean and the soil that is beneath my feet. For some, it is as though they operate separately, almost like being two different worlds, however the mycelium is within the ocean deep equally as it presides and communicates throughout the

Awakening mp3 Awakening Awakening is a song that emerged while I was creating within Talulah, a creative workflow that has now become my full-time path. There is something powerful about being truly in love with what you are co-creating. When you become aligned within that flow, there is a sense of peace that allows you to move with the natural undulations of life rather than resisting them. Awakening is woven from that energy a story of interconnection, renewal and findin

One reason this family matters so much is its relationship with soil microbes. Many legumes work with rhizobia bacteria in root nodules. These bacteria help convert atmospheric nitrogen into forms plants can use. The plant feeds the bacteria with sugars, and the bacteria support the plant with nitrogen.