New Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens Signage, 3rd June 2021, Diamond Beach, NSW

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Raintrees Native Rainforest Gardens is a six and a half acre cultivated rainforest arboretum with well in excess of 1000 Australian rainforest species growing on the property. The property is also home to many endemic native wet and dry sclerophyll species and many flowering subtropical and tropical exotics.
Rainforest plantings began in 1993 immediately following purchase of the property and have continued ever since.
In 2020 we decided that in 2021 we would build an Air B & B on the front corner of our property.
At the same time we commenced a process with a graphic design company who we contracted to produce artwork suitable for signage that could promote the property as an Air B&B.
While we completed the signage process unfortunately the 
Air B&B proposal has been put on hold due to difficulties achieving a suitable bushfire rating certification for the site. This certification will be followed up at some stage in the future by employment of professional fire risk certifiers to assist us to negotiate the various regulations currently standing in the way of the building project.

During 2020 Raintrees was also granted 'Land For Wildlife' status and soon after 'Humane Society International Wildlife Land Trust' status. Both designations are entirely non-binding and place no restrictions on what we can do on the property. They do however offer opportunities to apply for small grants for a range of flora and fauna conservation projects.

Many flora species planted on the property are listed as rare and endangered, indeed two critically endangered species are endemic to the property.
One of those species, Rhodamnia rubescens, as recently as 10 years ago, occurred naturally in large numbers until Myrtle Rust reached the property in 2011, within a year of it being first detected in Australia in the Gosford area of NSW in 2010. 
Just 15 Rhodamnia rubescens plants remain from a former population numbering in the several hundreds.
Those 15 plants are currently undergoing DNA analysis at Mount Annan Botanic Gardens in Sydney's west to determine if they are all different plants or suckers of an original possibly Myrtle Rust resistant plant. Cuttings and DNA material were taken in early 2020 by government scientific officers and results of that analysis should be known in the near future.

The other critically endangered plant that once existed on the property is Rhodomyrtus psidioides - Native Guava.
It's been all but totally wiped out by Myrtle Rust although root suckers keep appearing each year however the suckers usually die back and disappear by end of summer.

Cultivated threatened species growing on Raintrees include Brachychiton sp. Ormeau, Elaeocarpus sedentarius, Macadamia jansenii, Senna acclinis, Owenia cepiodora, Clausena smyrelliana and numerous others.
Raintrees has also been planted out with some of Australia's most beautifully flowering subtropical, dry and tropical rainforest trees such as Barklya syringifolia, Alloxylon flammeum, Brachychiton acerifolius, Brachychiton bidwillii, Bombax ceiba, Darlingia darlingiana, Grevillea baileyana, Deplanchea tetraphylla, Cassia marksiana, Flindersia pimenteliana, Macadamia tetraphylla and many many more.

Raintrees is also home to a number of the world's great exotic flowering trees, namely Cassia javanica, Chorisia speciosa, Delonix regia and Handroanthus impetiginosa.

Unfortunately we've now almost reached the end of available space on the property so much of the new planting is focussed on the understorey along with the addition of flowering and butterfly attracting vines. Epiphytes like native orchids and Platyceriums and Aspleniums are also being manually attached to trees.

While we did position many hollow logs up in trees many years ago these have reached the end of their life but very recently (June 2021)  a friend, who is very active with Fawna NSW, offered to install 6 nesting boxes in our trees. The boxes are all different and are designed to be suitable for a range of other wildlife. We've been assured that more nesting boxes could be made available to us in the not too distant future.
   

Taken in: Australia / New South Wales / Diamond Beach (show map)

Taken on: June 4, 2021

Tags:

Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens

Rainforest Arboretum

Rainforest Garden

Sign

Signage

New Sign

3rd June 2021

Diamond Beach

Mid North Coast

NSW

Australia

Raintrees

Gate

Land for Wildlife

Humane Society International

Wildlife Land Trust « less

Sets appears in: • Album 3 of 4 - Mid North Coast, NSW, Australia • Raintrees Native and Rainforest Gardens more » • Signs / Informational & Interpretive « less

Groups appears in: • Beautiful Great Lakes, Manning & Gloucester Regions of NSW

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