Many of these activities can be done with materials found at home. If you don’t have any plants, many nurseries and gardening suppliers will home deliver. Or go online to order plants, seeds, potting mix, gloves, and tools.
Try swapping cuttings with your neighbors or sharing gardening equipment – but make sure to adhere to the social distancing guidelines and other health guidelines.
Containers: Get creative
Melissa Hatty, PhD researcher in Behavioural Science at Monash University
It is good for your mental and physical. It’s also possible to garden in any size space. From growing alfalfa in wool to creating an urban permaculture Garden and everything in between. Many herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees will thrive in containers if space is restricted.
Container gardening can be a great way to express yourself. Art can be used to process thoughts and intense feelings. Creativity has also been associated with a more happy mood. While we’re at home, creative expression through containers may also help to combat boredom and loneliness that are related to prolonged solitude.
Get creative and turn something old into the perfect home for your plant. Garry Knight/Flickr CC-BY
Plant in old shoes or jeans. You can also plant in furniture. You can ask your friends and neighbors for old items that you could use as planters. Your upcycling also helps the environment by turning trash into useful things.
Backyard Science
Judith Friedlander – Environment media researcher at the University of Technology Sydney and PlantingSeeds founder,
is the perfect time to embrace citizen science. Many people who work from home have more time to contribute. They can also learn and connect with other like-minded individuals.
You can send data, images, audio, and more from your backyard or window to scientists in need.
Read more: Want to help save wildlife after the fires? You can do it in your backyard.
Try Birddata – BirdLife Australia’s web portal – which works to collaboratively and scientifically collect data from people to protect Australia’s birds. Users engage with an interactive map to identify their area and input information on bird observations and the date observed.
What birds do you see outside your window or door? Matthew Willimott, CC BY
Questagame is another mobile game that encourages players to get outdoors, engage in nature, and learn about it. It also helps protect the life on Earth (while staying away from other people). Users can report sightings, such as animals, plants, and fungi. They can also identify other users’ sightings.
Other citizen science programs can be found here. Many citizen science programs, such as Digivol, can be completed from your computer if you don’t have the time to go outside. Digital, a crowdsourcing platform created by the Australian Museum with ALA, is a platform that allows users to volunteer their time and transcribe natural history collections.
Make mulch
Greg Moore, Botanist at the University of Melbourne
Many of us are confined to our homes and rarely have the time to deadwood trees and shrubs.
Deadwooding involves removing all of the little dead twigs, branches, and leaves from your shrubs and trees. You’ll see that your plants look healthier and better, and there is less risk of damage from windstorms.
The dead material that you have removed can also be used to make a great mulch. The best mulch has a mixture of particle sizes – fine, coarse, and everything in between. Deadwood can play a role in this.
Use dead plants in your garden to make mulch. Maddy Baker/Unsplash, CC BY
The fine twigs will break down quickly, but the coarser material (with a diameter of up to 50 millimeters and a length between 30 and 50 centimeters), like larger branches and stems, can hold air and water and last for several years.
Your mulch should be between 75mm and 100mm thick. If you start now, in a few years, you’ll have a much healthier garden.
Plants for winter pollinators
Tanya Latty, Entomologist at the University of Sydney
Many types of pollinating insects are active in the winter, even though we associate them with summer.
While we are hunkered down in the autumn, it is best to plant a winter-active garden that will attract pollinators such as hoverflies, bees, and (on warm days) stingless honeybees.
