Pat Muir

Nativeness, Invasiveness, and Nation in Australian Plants

The conceptualization of alien invasive species conflates two axes of variability that have become unhelpfully blurred. The nativeness/alienness axis refers to the presumed belonging of a species in ecological or social space. Invasiveness refers to the behavior of the species in question, particularly in relation to other species. The overlay of nation introduces further variability. Teasing these axes apart is important for more effective environmental management. We examine these concepts using two influential forms of ecological knowledge: the biogeographical and ecological literature and the vernacular experiences of suburban backyarders. Three case studies, the invasive native Pittosporum undulatum and two invasive exotics, Lantana camara and Cinnamomum camphora, illustrate the complex and contingent nature of human interactions with such species and the potential for human interactions to increase and/or reduce the propagation of plant species.

AUSTRALIAN BACKYARD GARDENS AND THE JOURNEY OF MIGRATION

Gardens have been an important site of environmental engagement in Australia since the British colonization. They are places where immigrant people and plants have carried on traditions from their homelands and have worked out an accommodation with new social and biophysical environments. We examined the backyard gardens of three contemporary migrant groups—Macedonian, Vietnamese, and British born—in suburban Australia and a group of first‐generation Australians with both parents born overseas. In Macedonian backyards, emphasis was strong on the production of vegetables; in Vietnamese backyards, on herbs and fruit. British backyards were more diverse, some focusing on non‐native ornamental flowers and others favoring native plants. The cohesiveness of the respective groups was partly an artifact of our sampling strategy. The Macedonian and Vietnamese migrants shared an affinity for productive, humanized landscapes that reflected their rural, subsistence backgrounds and crossed over into their attitudes toward the broader environment and national parks. The rural and village backgrounds help explain why intensive backyard food production has broken down among the next generation in (sub)urban Australia, becoming part of heritage rather than everyday practice.

Changing cultures of water in eastern Australian backyard gardens

Research into diverse cultural understandings of water provides important contributions to the pressing global issue of sustainable supply, particularly when combined with analysis of relationships between everyday household practice and larger sociotechnical networks of storage and distribution. Here we analyse semi-structured interviews with 298 people about their 241 backyards in the Australian east coast cities of Sydney and Wollongong, undertaken during the 2002–2003 drought. Water emerged as an important issue in both consciousness and practice. In contrast to a number of other environmental issues which stimulate more polarised responses, a commitment to reducing water consumption was shared across the study population and manifest in a variety of changed practices. However, these aspirations are in tension with the pleasure derived from water, and expressed desires for more watery environments. This work contrasts with and extends other studies that have emphasised the perceived separation between the modern home and the networks of production that sustain it. We argue that it is in the relationship between house and garden that people see, understand and participate in the network of water storage and distribution. Their active engagement with these processes enhances their capacity to manage and reduce consumption.

Edges of Connection: reconceptualising the human role in urban biogeography

Abstract The Sydney Basin Bioregion has high native species diversity, a large proportion of its land area under conservation tenure and over five million human residents. Environmental management strategies developed on the basis of an ecological and biogeographical literature that is either blind to the human presence or views it solely as a threat are unlikely to be effective in such a context. Humans will need to be re-imagined and co-opted as active co-constructors of this nature rather than solely as threats to it. We bring ethnographic and biogeographic evidence together to address this practical challenge, analysing the attitudes and practices of 38 backyarders who live adjacent to, or in close proximity to, bushland. Results are summarised along a continuum between restoration and gardening. Important themes are boundaries and boundedness between domestic and outside space, engagement and stewardship on public land, and nurturing and vigilance behaviours.

A Fine-Grained Study of the Experience of Drought, Risk and Climate Change Among Australian Wheat Farming Households

An increasing body of research shows that climate change takes expression in local processes such as increased climatic variability; climatic risk is managed in relation to other risks in agricultural households; and adaptation is an everyday social process as much as a question of new crop varieties. Understanding how farming households experience the interactions of climatic variability, multifaceted risk, adaptation, and everyday social processes is crucial to informed policy development. A study of New South Wales wheat farming households during the failed harvest seasons of 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 provided a unique opportunity to examine how they approached unprecedented drought in relation to both past and future changes. We analyzed their experience of the hybrid assemblage comprising risk, climate change, and a deregulated policy environment in their everyday lives and individual bodies. These farmers are not adapting to future conditions but are in continuous interplay among multiple temporalities, including memories of the past. They see themselves as adapting in situ rather than relocating northwards with predicted rainfall movements. Capacities to deal with risk and uncertainty vary with a range of social and locational factors, tending to coalesce into patterns of vulnerability and resilience that offer strong predictors as to which households are most likely to be sustainable in the longer term.