What Illawarra gardeners planted this year, and the local natives worth a spot

By Isaac Olson of Nursery Near Me

New South Wales gardeners planted for privacy this year, and about half of what they planted was Australian native.

That is what 12 months of orders at Nursery Near Me show. The online nursery tracked 3,165 orders and 20,604 plants across the country between September 2025 and August 2026. New South Wales addresses took 1,012 of those orders and 6,199 plants, second only to Queensland, and the Illawarra, from Helensburgh to Kiama, is one of the regions the nursery delivers to by courier.

Hedging and screening were the two biggest uses in the state, ahead of feature planting and pots, and the plant list follows: the single most planted plant was a lilly pilly hedge, which outsold the next plant more than five to one, and two more lilly pilly varieties filled the next places. After the hedges came spear grass, no mow grass, sweet viburnum, fountain grass, white agapanthus and climbing fig. Low maintenance was the feature people looked for most, then bird attracting and Australian native.

Half of the New South Wales order was native, against 62 per cent in Victoria. For the Illawarra that number could be higher, because the plants that suit the coast between the escarpment and the sea are, for the most part, the ones that grew here first.

The grassy woodland, at home

The lowland grassy woodlands of the Illawarra – the ones the Illawarra Nature Festival has been drawing attention to – are built on a few plants that any garden can use. Kangaroo grass is the backbone, a tussock that turns rust red in summer and asks for nothing. Common tussock grass and spear grass sit with it. Lomandra and the blue flax lily fill the gaps, and native violet runs under them as a groundcover that takes shade and foot traffic. A bed of those five, planted from tubes 40 centimetres apart, is a woodland understorey in miniature by autumn, and it feeds the blue banded bees and the finches that a mown lawn does not.

Screening with locals

The lilly pilly that leads the state list has an Illawarra cousin in the rainforest gullies, and the modern hedging forms do the same job on a suburban fence line: dense, glossy, bird friendly and happy in the humidity that defeats English box. Coastal rosemary is the other local screen, a grey-leafed shrub that shrugs off salt wind and clips into a hedge. For a small tree, blueberry ash and tuckeroo are both Illawarra natives that stay compact in a garden, and coast banksia suits the exposed blocks near the water.

Timing

Across the country April was the busiest planting month, and autumn is still the kindest season on the coast. But spring planting works well here if you mulch deeply and water by hand through the first hot spell, because the escarpment keeps the summer rain coming.

Where to get them

The native plants above are sold as tubestock, the small pots that establish faster than advanced plants and cost a few dollars each, and they travel by courier to any address in the Illawarra. Nursery Near Me delivers to Wollongong and the surrounding suburbs, with the full native range listed here.

The full study, with charts by state, is free to reproduce with a credit via Nursery Near Me's blog.

This Illawarra Flame partner content is thanks to Nursery Near Me, a proud supporter of independent local news.

About the writer

Isaac Olson is a director of Nursery Near Me, an Australian online nursery that delivers to every mainland state.