in rehabilitation projects, council plantings, parklands and increasingly in home gardens, to preserve the gene pool of the local native plants.

The Cumberland Plain has been prized for its fertile soils and easy terrain since white settlement and in more recent years, housing has provided more of a threat to the flora and fauna of the Cumberland Plain Woodlands which is

now classified an Endangered Ecological Community under the NSW Conservation Act 1995 and the Commonwealth Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Native gardens have been popular in Australia for some time but it is not always good enough to just plant native plants. If the native plant is from

Western Australia, that would be akin, in distance, to taking a native plant

from China and planting it in Switzerland. If we plant a Lomandra

longifolia in Victoria without tracing its provenance, it may well be a Lomandra

longifolia from Cape York - such is the distribution of some species of plants.

If you are a gardener in the Penrith or Hawkesbury region you may like to

consider using plants native to our local area. Why not try a bush tucker

plant? Wild, bush, native, Aboriginal or Australian foods are being discovered by non-aboriginal Australians and Muru Mittigar is growing and promoting

provenance bush food plants for the home garden in the Penrith and Hawkesbury areas.

These foods were traditionally eaten by the Darug people of the Penrith/Hawkesbury region. You don't need a large garden to grow bush food

plants. In fact even a pot on a balcony is sufficient to grow some, including

native mint.

Native mint or Mentha diemenica was widely used for flavouring and as a

medicinal herb. The crushed leaves were inhaled to ease headaches. The

leaves may be used as a flavouring and garnish for cool summer drinks in a

similar manner to the common introduced mint, you can make Mint Olive

Oil - infuse 250ml of olive oil with 1 teaspoon of native mint. It is very easily grown in the garden as a ground cover, or in a pot.

You will be doing your small bit to preserve Western Sydney's Cumberland Plain