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When I bought my block on top of the Lake George escarpment near Bungendore, NSW, in 2007, a friend said “you’ll never grow a garden here!” He had a point – too cold, too hot, too windy, too dry … and then there’s that ‘Bywong clay’. And, as it turned out, there was also more than a handful of kangaroos.
Grey kangaroos
Determined to prove the doubters wrong, I carefully constructed my garden beds … half river sand, and the rest made from a mix of bought ‘topsoil’, the local clay, and my ‘secret’ ingredient, coco-peat. I planted over a hundred ‘boutique’ native plants (sourced mainly from Park Lane Nursery back in Wangaratta) and over their first summer, they thrived.
Satisfied, I went away for a month in April – May, and came back to find …. they’d all been eaten down, or out. I had lost probably half of them. A third still had some green foliage surviving at their base, and the rest were (remarkably I thought) untouched.
I’ve never seen as many kangaroos in any rural area as exist in these parts …. they love the Canberra hobby-farm landscape, obviously, with its pastures un-pressured by commercial flocks, a dam on every 5 acre block … and landowners who not only don’t shoot them, but some who even buy hay for these, the most drought-resilient of animals.
And its these animals that pose the greatest challenge to the gardener here. The trials and errors of the past five years have taught me some strategies that have helped overcome the frustration of that first autumn, and grow a garden in this environment so heavily populated with kangaroos.
As you’re unlikely to keep kangaroos out of your garden (bigger kangaroos can jump a 2m fence), here are some strategies and insights for managing kangaroos in your garden:
My ‘kangaroo-magnet’ buffalo lawn
#1: Don’t plant lawn. I like the small area of buffalo grass lawn I installed in that first summer to replace the sea of pavers I inherited. It’s not invasive, and will survive the droughts and frosts of these parts. But it’s a mecca for kangaroos. It brings them right into the garden, and once there, they can’t resist the other tasty treats on offer. I don’t regret the lawn, but it means more reliance on the other strategies below.
#2 Kangaroos will eat spiky plants. Plants with the spikiest, thorniest foliage may still be palatable to kangaroos.
#3 You need to rely mainly on ‘unpalatable’ plants. There are some genera of native plants that are, generally, unpalatable to kangaroos.
Australian native plants that are unpalatable to kangaroos
• Plants with oily or fragrant foliage. Plants with high oil content (including some which have fragrant foliage) include species of Eremophila, Prostanthera, Westringia, Eriostemon, and Myoporum appear almost totally unpalatable to ‘roos. Little wonder some of these have become the ‘woody weeds’ of our rangelands. Other ‘woody weed’ genera will also likely be left untouched by ‘roos.
Eremophila nivea remains unpalatable to kangaroos
• Plants with hairy or sticky leaves. There’s a million words in the botanical dictionary for ‘hairy’, and if a plant’s foliage is one of these (particularly if its ‘glaucous’) it may be unpalatable. Examples include Ptilotus, Chrysocephalum, Lysiosepalum and Xerochrysum. Genera which are, as a rule, palatable, may have species which aren’t, such as Acacia howittii or Acacia verniciflua. Also, some strappy-leafed plants, like Lomandra are generally left un-touched, but others (e.g. Dianella) seem to be more palatable.
• Woody plants. Some plants (like Callistemon) seem to have too much cellulose (i.e, are too woody) to be palatable.
Genera with these features should make up the bulk of the plantings, particularly early on.
#4. Guard everything in Year 1: Young plants, and particularly those straight out of the nutrient rich potting mix of the nursery, are particularly palatable. Even plants of genera that are generally unpalatable, should be guarded in Year 1. ‘Guarding’ can include plastic or mesh tree guards, netting, or old chicken wire from the tip, either placed around or on top of the plants (depending on the plants form).
Kangaroo in my garden in winter – note dead lawn, it loves my plants!
#5 Kangaroos hit plants hard in winter: In summer, there’s lots of growth everywhere and the garden isn’t hassled by kangaroos. Guards can be removed after the last frost (i.e., mid-October) but should be re-installed around the first frost (i.e., late April). The unpalatable genera can probably remain un-guarded in their second year. In a drought year, it may be necessary for plants to be guarded all summer.
Hakea ‘Burrendong Beauty’ caged up for winter protection from kangaroos
#6 Some plants remain palatable to kangaroos, others don’t. In later years, many plants may survive year-round un-guarded and only be ‘lightly pruned’ by the marsupial herbivores. In my garden these include Grevillea, Melaleuca, Baeckea and Scaevola. Just observe and guard if necessary. Others, however, will be munched no matter how old they are. These seem to include plants in the Papilionaceae (pea-flowers) and Rutaceae (Correa, Boronia) families, among others. Sadly, there’s not much point in planting these unless you’re prepared to keep them guarded, particularly in winter.
Hakea uncaged in late summer
My garden is composed entirely of plants that don’t grow taller than a metre …. but taller plants will of course be right once they get above browsing height.
#7 Forget foliar sprays. I reckon there’s a lot of rubbish spoken about the effectiveness of foliar sprays. Whatever the peddlers of these products might take out of your wallet, in my experience they won’t work. neem oil, and other such potions recommended to me, seem to just make the foliage shinier and yummier for kangaroos. They might as well recommend a spray of dishwater!
Some have suggested the use of foliar sprays used in New Zealand to deter possums, but I was told these are not registered for use in Australia.
Epacris in its kangaroo-proof cage
#8 Don’t believe the peri-urban myths: Myths include the application of blood and bone as a deterrent, but of course, you wouldn’t want to put that on your natives. Or, even (for the blokes) pissing around your garden to ‘mark your territory’, but first-hand experience suggests this is no deterrent at all!
#9 Roos will not only eat, but trample. Roos will be oblivious to whatever paths you’ve made through your garden. Large kangaroos can easily trample or dislodge plants from your garden. I’ve lost a couple of semi-advanced plants from this. Strong, high and sturdy stakes (with or without guards) around your plants may provide some protection.
#10 Try a dog?: Would a house-dog deter ‘roos at night? I don’t know … but it might.
The result: Despite the cold, the hot, the dry and the wind, and despite the native clay soil, I managed to establish a garden that is diverse and attractive, as for 6 or 7 months of the year, the unsightly guarding can be dispensed with. By employing these strategies, I’m now OK with kangaroos in the garden (they’re certainly a highlight for visitors!) but you certainly need to manage their impacts to have any kind of garden in kangaroo country.
[This article first appeared in the Australian Native Plant Society Canberra Region (Inc) journal]
So interesting and helpful to read this. I am trying to figure out how to protect a row of 20 crepe myrtles at the edge of my property (on the outskirts of Canberra) until they are large enough to cope with the kangaroos. I currently have “pink buckets” around everything (about 200) and even then find kangaroos poking their heads inside to munch away. Grrrr! I love the kangaroos (especially the babies) but do find it very frustrating that they eat everything – oleander, lomandra, flowering fruit trees, olive trees and heaps more. I have, however, planted dozens of correa with nary a nibble – I hope that writing this does not jinx me. It does not seem to me that many species can be declared kangaroo repellant – though rosemary seems very hardy. I wonder if planting rosemary around and under my crepe myrtles might be useful?
It depends on how big, and how much effort… I made chicken wire ‘cloches’ for my grevilleas and hakeas that are 75cm tall and about 60cm across; they’re working well to let the plants get established and the roos take care of any needed tip pruning. The cloches look tidy, and are easily lifted out of the way for weeding.
If you are pruning the crape myrtles as trees, it might do to take wire mesh with fairly wide openings, use about 1500mm to make a tube, and then wrap the tube in smaller mesh at the appropriate height. We did this with concrete reinforcing wire we got out of a builder’s debris pile some years ago to protect our tomatoes from deer.
Tubes of Bunning’s dog wire (inverted so the small mesh is at the top) might also work, but that might be a bit expensive.
Thanks Christine! 🙂 I was wondering if something like that might work. The other options are to individually stake and wire protect each tree or install posts with wire protecting the entire row. All the options are fiddly and expensive but hopefully there will come a point when I can release the trees! At this stage they are only 12 -18 inches tall so the pink buckets are working mostly but it won’t be long before they outgrow my buckets. Now to be on the hunt for affordable wire.
I wanted to try tall wire waste bins from Ikea but that was too much for my country-raised hubby.
Good luck with the hunt for wire. Remember that from your perspective, rust just makes the cages less obvious. 😉
Substitute “deer” for “kangaroo” in your posting, Mark, and you could have been writing about gardening in many parts of Europe and North America. All the same strategies are needed here if it’s impossible to keep the animals out, including concentrating on species they (generally) don’t eat, guarding everything during the first year or two, and guarding the more susceptible plants every winter. It’s such a shame, though, to have to look at wire cages for a substantial chunk of the year, instead of the lovely natural shapes of shrubs and perennials that we dreamed of when we designed and planted the garden. I am still trying to keep the deer out even though they can also jump 2m fences, just like roos. My current strategy is to try to block their view of what’s in the garden by a combination of wall plus laurel hedge all along the front boundary: if they can’t see in, then in general they don’t seem to bother investigating. I have also, at least in some years, had some success with a (very expensive) deterrent spray called Liquid Fence, though last year one particularly voracious stag chomped determinedly through the “yuk” barrier, and only caging literally scores of plants (from Pittosporums down to tulips!) succeeded in protecting them from him. Thankfully I have seen no sign of him this year – perhaps he has turned into venison on someone’s dinner table!
Hello Chris
Thank you for your article it is by far the most helpful.
I have retired from Canberra to Tasmania and fortunately only have one pesky pademelon that has devoured most of my geraniums.
I have started to hammer stakes along the fence line about 50 cm deep where he has been digging and it seems to keep him from digging in these spots again.
He likes everything even lavender so fragrance is not a deterrent.
He keeps trying different locations along my east fence but I can see that he has very limited success. Particularly where I have but chicken wire into the ground and then hammered the metal stakes through it.
The stakes are 30 cm apart and I keep adding to new areas that paddy tries. I hope that he eventually gets sick and tired of trying.
Cheers Ingrid
Just to update some of my earlier comments on establishing a native garden in the Adelaide hills.
As Mark Sheahan reported in his article, everything needs a tree guard or cage while getting established. One nip from a roo (even if its just tasting) puts paid to tube stock. Larger nursery plants seem more succulent and less aromatic, and need to outgrow that phase.
Eremophilas seem completely untouched once established, as do lomandra and dianellas. We have decorative kangaroo grasses in some parts of the garden that are hard to get to (eg between rocks) and those are fine too (so far).
Grevilleas are very mixed; once established, the little ‘Jelly Baby’ and ‘Winter Delight’ lavandulacea hybrids have been bug eaten, but seem ignored by the kangaroos. Grevillea Honey Gem is tasty (but should eventually get too big to kill), Winparra Gem gets eaten where its accessible, Ned Kelly has been left alone (but its growing near the hakeas and the Winparra Gems).
Cultivars of the SA-locally native correas were fine once established (2+ years), no significant browsing. These all have furry leaves and are somewhat aromatic. We recently uncaged several glossy leaved hybrids (eg, Tucker Time Dinner Bells) that were too big for their .5m cages, I’ll be curious to see how they’ve done.
The kangaroo paws are all still in tubes of animal caging and maybe always will be –I just lift the cages off to tend them.
We never caged the billy buttons (I forgot!) and they’ve all been fine.
Our hybrid hakeas (Stockdale Sensation and Burrendong Beauty) are still roo magnets, with any accessible foliage regularly pruned off. The cages around the SS are now almost 2m high and over a meter across. The exception is a group of BBs that we planted to cascade down a steep section of hill; that seems incovenient enough to deter serious browsing though occasionally the plants at the upper edge do get munched. The back three are accordingly still in cages for one last winter. Our landscaper put in half a dozen native hakeas from tubestock without cage guards, and the roos ate them all to the ground; we caged them and they seem to be coming back. The same was true of the Banksia marginatas; no clue when those will get woody enough to be uninteresting –some of them are 3 years old now and still caged.
The chicken wire cloches work amazingly well and are holding up better than expected –the weed whacker guy is at least as big a threat to them as the roos. However, we’ve mostly gone to tubes of galvinized mesh/fencing as its just faster to make the cages.
A few things, like the Eremophilas, overgrew the cages when we weren’t paying attention and I did a lot of damage getting the cages off. But the grevilleas and hakeas –if they grow out through the cages, the roos eat them off.
The birds seem to consider the cages an asset!
Thank you for a timely article, as we warm up to planting a block in the Adelaide Hills. We see roos almost every day, and its going to be hard to juggle avoiding undesirable native and non-native ‘weeds’ with my desire to have an attractive, native-based garden that supports a diversity of bird life.
Are there any correas, banksias, or warratahs that I might be successful with? Are there other acacias besides verniciflua and howittii (both of which I’ve already planted) that I should consider? Are the native tussock grasses as attractive as the names “kangaroo” and “wallaby” grass would suggest?
Chris
Hi Chris
Correas seem to be very palatable to ‘roos, so not recommended. So do many banksias, but guarding may work to protect until established. Ditto for Waratahs.
If you have roo problems, guard everything year-round in Year 1, then in winter for years 2 and 3, then experiment with not guarding, and see if the plants are being browsed. Ask your native nursery about which wattles may have glaucous foliage and be unpalatable, and where possible use locally native species.
Kangaroo Grass (Themeda) and Wallaby Grass (Danthonia) are attractive, particularly the Themeda, I’d say.
Cheers, Mark
Thanks for the reply, Mark. I will probably try the correas but limit them to right up against the wrap-around decking, on the theory that might make them easier to protect.. There are also two older and well established correas near our front fence, remnants of the time our property was operated as a native plant nursery. Maybe I’ll see if I can strike those, as they may have survived because they were less palatable.
I’ll substitute lomandras for the kangaroo grass.
We planted a small screen of A verniciflua and howittii and Hakea laurina ‘Stockdale Rose’ over Christmas. We followed advice from Mt. Barker State Flora natives nursery as to local species, but I selected the two acacias based on the attractive combination of foliage textures, not roo resistance! We did put in stakes and tree guards –we’ve seen a roo barrel over a 4-5 year old stringybark. Thus far the roos have left the acacias alone, but have gone to great lengths to get at the Stockdale Rose hakeas. Fingers crossed that they’ll be less tasty as the plants toughen up to post-nursery living (they were in 2l nersery pots).
Are westringias (eventually) woody enough to deter the roos? I like bottle brushes and grevilleas but do want to offer as wide a variety of nectar sources as possible.
We have experimented with many trees and plants and have found anything with a strong smell in the leaf deters them. Penstonemons are one of the successful plants growing untouched by the kangaroos here.
Here in the Mt Lofty Ranges SA the thing that brings roos into the garden is apple trees! They will do anything to get to them & eat them in preference to grass or almost anything else. My fantasy is to fence them out but it would cost me thousands. A dog would work but I am right on a busy road & dogs don’t last long with the speeding traffic. I can protect most of the apples until big enough to survive a roo attack but the devils walk over everything else to get at apple leaves. I grow many poisonous plants but the roos don’t seem to eat them. I did have a rabbit eat all the leaves off my mandrake plants one year & I never heard from him again even though rabbits are supposed to tolerate the poison in them. As a child 60 odd yrs ago I never saw a kangaroo & it is only in the past 10yrs that they have become a pest I guess one solution would be to eat them but as a lifelong vegetarian that option is not available!
Two things (we use them) that will keep Roo’s away from your garden, along with cats and rabbits.
Once each month spray into the soil around your garden “Cloudy Ammonia”. This soaks into the top soil and lasts for some time even if it rains.
The other product we find most effective for a large area is years ago had a problem with barking dogs, so bought a Electronic Stop bark. If a dog barked within 30 yards distance it would emit a high pitched sound that hurts it’s ears and soon the dog stops barking. Humans cannot hear this high pitched sound.
However if you use the remote to activate i the sound can travel 300 yards and if you want it to go even further the sound can be wired through an amplifier. So if you have this running 24/7 by pressing the remote and placing a weight on it the sound will blanket a large are and keep the un-wanted’s away.
Note about the remote. Most use a 3 volt battery so having it on for some time will flatten the battery. So by removing the battery from the remote and wiring a 240 volt AC to 3 volt transformer will get round that problem.
However as we have a fence around our property the simplest method we find is when we take out the garbage bin once each week for collection, simply spray a track across the driveway entrance.
This takes less than half a minute. Also as a bottle of cloudy ammonia only costs a bit over $1 and will do the job for 3 months means it is relatively cheap and easy.
Best regards
Peter
We have bought a new home in a newly built area apposite a park their is still a lot of building going on we have put lawn & a few shrubs at night there is a couple of big Roos cuming & eating our grass our dog starts barking but they don’t stop eating our grass they haven’t touched the flowers but the Roos cum very close to our window where we r sleeping & a lot of poo in the morning which my hubby has to pick up every day we don’t know wat to do it’s getting out of hand I have thought of ring our local council if they can do something with this problem
It has been my experience (here on the Coffs Coast) that Kangaroos only eat grasses.
We have a mix of native and exotic grasses around our house, and the ‘roos seem to enjoy most of these. They also relish our mondo grass (which we have edging our garden beds) during the dry season (ie, in winter).
The ‘roos will take advantage of shade to rest during the heat of the day throughout the hotter months and will ‘prepare their possies’ in our garden flattening out an area, but not eating any of the plants they are laying on.
We have had the same ‘roo family group visit our 2.5 acres garden for over ten years now and we delight in sharing our space with them, if at times we curse them for making our mondo look so untidily cropped!
Hi Mark , not just in Canberra’s outskirts but we live a mere 40 minutes from Sydney CBD in the North West of Sydney and our gardens are constantly smashed by Wallabies who although cuter than roos are the monsters of your garden. So far, they haven’t touched lomandra, Dorianthes, Kangaroo Paw or any native grasses such as Pennisetum but everything else is prominent on the menu. It is a constant battle to maintain a garden in our area between the Wallabies and the Rabbits
I have only one rose, but the kangaroos love it.
I can stop them eating it by sprinkling chilli powder on it but it washes off in the rain. and I’m concerned it too might kill the rose.
any suggestions. a spray I can make up or buy?
Hi Sandra
You could try putting chunky (2″ x 2″ x 24″) stakes in the ground around the rose which might keep the rose out of reach of the kangaroos. Is there room to put other plants around the rose as well (with the stakes which will then also be hidden but may prevent kangaroos from going there)? (I am thinking of underplanting my crepe myrtles with blue lagoon rosemary which should get bushy and big enough to help keep the kangaroos away especially in spring when the new growth is very attractive to them.
Hi Sandra, try this. Buy a bottle of cloudy ammonia. Put it in a sprayer and once each month spray a large circle of it into the ground around your beloved rose. Make sure it is a couple of feet from where the rose is planted.
When you are filling the sprayer with ammonia, do it outside or in a well ventilated area as it really smells bad (the fumes that is).
Regards
Peter B.
Thanks Peter – definitely worth trying. So much easier than all the fencing and posts and plant protectors and everything else. I’d be interested to hear how others go with this.
Whilst a vast amount of this article was very informative I disagree with #10 as a Veterinary Nurse I have seen far too many dogs be disembowelled by kangaroos to agree with this recommendation. There are the cases that it may work but if there is a buck protecting his family group he will stop at nothing to scare off an intruder whether they be dog or human.
my problem with roos here in the Yarra Valley is that I am a ‘grass farmer’. Trying to keep some pasture for my horses is almost impossible, I can have up to 50 at a time on our 5 acres. Conversely, they never eat my plants…….
I live in the Territory & wallabies are a huge issue. All plants I want to live have to be surrounded by wire mesh till there tall enough. I have tried Cheyenne pepper & it killed off a few. Didn’t mean to but…. I’m now growing a little orange chilli which is 700 times hotter than a regular pepper. Extremely hot. Can’t be handled without gloves. I’m going to ty a few different ways with these. Because we’ve still got a few months of no rain it will be a good time to make a spray & test that put. At one stage I had a wild pig issue digging up the ground & I chopped up peppers & spread it through my garden & lawn. I haven’t had that problem again. I used dry chopped chillies that time so maybe my new chillies may work. Its worth a try.
I am starting my own veggie patch this year and I live in a very roo prone area. I am planning to make a cover from some old fly cover from an unused tent and strap it down to some short star posts!
Hi Ruby
I’m about to do the same, I’m interested to hear how you went. I’m planning building a roofed enclose around a veggie patch and planting dwarf fruit trees. I wonder if the roos will be deterred by chicken wire or will I need to use something stonger.