woody meadow

We have come to accept that Australia is not the place for English flora, in particular, the English meadow of herbs and grasses and soft flowers.  Buttercups, for instance.  Our climate is too harsh and our open spaces tend to fill up with scraggy weeds and parched remnants of plants.  A research project at Melbourne University was set up to prove that it was possible to create a pleasing urban environment in patches of land that had been regarded as a dead loss by planting small Australian woody plants in low-nutrient soils in a way that mimics areas of natural shrubs. These areas are low maintenance and yet provide rapid coverage to create a pleasing landscape.  They also help to regulate rain run-off. The most they need by way of TLC is a hard pruning every couple of years to encourage flowering.  Woody meadows have, after a couple of decades of research, become popular.