Aroideana, may I ask how much direct sun that plant gets per day? Thanks. Mike

Greenthumbz, those are gorgeous pics! I've heard that there are a couple of trees that are not native to North America but are used by significant numbers of native insects. 1) Malus/Crabapples - native, hybrid, or exotic, Douglas Tallamy's book stated that the leaf chemistry is so similar that North american insects will use all species. This certainly bears true in my experience. I've got lots of crabs, a few specimens and a crazy wild thicket full of them in back,and they are bird magnets, not just for the fruits in the fall but for the nectar and insects in spring and summer. 2) Picea abies/Norway spruce - don't have any personal experience, but was told this by an ornithology student at Cornell who was doing a study on the subject

g'day there will be lots of varieties of all fruits and nuts you can grow, do some research you will find some of the colder region fruits have tropical varieties. with nuts the obvious macadamia's, pecan's but you may be able to grow walnuts and cashews? you can grow all the citrus's and banana's as well, just with apples, pears and the stone fruits you could have a battle with tropical fruit fly, which you may or may not win depends if you are going to do all this organically and sustainably? we always regretted planting thos soft f/f prone fruits should have stuck with easier to grow citrus. do some research on the native varieties of fruits as well this one comes to mind Aussie finger lime (Microcitrus australasica ) there are many more. here are a couple: Jaboticaba aka Amazon Tree Grape - 'Myrciaria cauliflora' big down side the birds love them too. Carambola, Starfruit. there are different varieties of these. birds could also be a nuisance, not much you can do about them but. fig birds, black faced cuckoo shrikes and crows along with common koel's aka storm birds, king parrots as pretty as they are and as friendly as they want to be don't attract them to your place by feeding they will decimate all fruits including tomato's. then there's the flying foxes. with frost if any might mean some plants need covering until they reach about 1.7 meters high the wind will be no worry and when they grow the could all act as wind breaks. and if you do get frost a large orchard will bring the temp up that degree or 2 and maybe the frosts will be no more? would suggest plant along the contours and use heaps of mulch, around the new plantings and between the rows, you may benefit from doing some rip swalling to allow more water into your sub-soil best to do this before planting and mulching. len Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page

The miss-naming of exotic plants as natives is not always the fault of the nurseries, though most nursery people have almost zero botanical knowledge and this does not help. There are actually two native species of Myrraya. Murraya ovatifoliolata occurs in dry or coastal rainforest from south Queensland to Cape York and to the Kimberley in WA. There is another one, a large and showy plant, that occurs on Cape York Peninsula and botanists insist on calling it Murraya paniculata though it does not look much like the exotic version. This is where mistakes come about. Someone will look up a herbarium list and it says Murraya paniculata occurs in Australia therefore the ones we are selling must be a native. Another one is Syzygium malaccense. The Australian one looks very little like the Asian one and the fruit are completely different. Even the common Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina) occurs in Australia, but all the ones sold in nurseries are from Asia. Here is a link that might be useful: Rainforest Magic