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Old 23-03-2007, 11:25 AM posted to aus.family,aus.gardens
eggs eggs is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Mar 2007
Posts: 8
Default X-post: Poisonous plants and childcare

In article ,
Chookie wrote:

In article , "Ally" wrote:

You story reminds me of the audit done at my kids child care centre. All of
the trees were cut down and replaced with shadecloth because it was decided
that they may drop limbs.


sigh

There are a known range of gums that do this -- Lemon-Scented Gum, for
example. But they don't do it wihtout a reason AFAIK. It's a response to
stress -- drop a limb to have more water/nutrients for the rest of the tree.
Keep the tree unstressed and it is fine.


We had a bigish lemon scented gum in our backyard when we moved in 4
years ago. As the drought has progressed, it's branches started dying
off and I started chopping them off before they fell on the kids. Now
it only has a couple of branches and it looks really stupid in the
middle of the yard with a big trunk and not much else. I was just about
ready to chop it down when it started raining again and now those couple
of branches are all leafy again. I might chop it down anyway and plant
something more suitable as I'm pretty sure this is only a break in the
drought, not the end of it. Any suggestions for a nice shade tree for
the courtyard (space is about 6m X 6m where the current tree stands)?
I'd prefer something with a non-invasive root system as there is a city
sewer pipe down there under the yard.

eggs.