Autumn has well and truly arrived in the Colour City, and that means now is the time to get busy in the garden for beautiful blooms in spring.

To help local gardens, the Friends of the Orange Botanic Garden’s Autumn plant sale, held this month, showcased a huge variety of plants locally sourced, climate-appropriate natives and exotics, all at very reasonable prices.

All the plants at the sale were propagated and cared for by Friends of the Botanic Garden volunteers and sourced from local gardens, the Botanic Gardens themselves, or nearby reserves, including Mount Canobolas.

“We're getting a much better range now of natives,” said volunteer Chris Mills at the nursery prior to the sale.

“Plus we're getting a wider range of the stuff that goes underneath, so not just the trees, the ground covers, and now we're actually starting to move into the microbiology in the soil, which is probably even more important.”

Chris took 'Orange City Life' to a table holding trays of young wattles and explained that they have begun inoculating the plants they are propagating with beneficial soil bacteria.

“It’s like they’ve got their natural fertiliser with them,” Chris said, explaining that the bacteria help fix nitrogen in the soil, which results in better early growth and plant vigour.

“So the plant provides a home and sugars to feed the bacteria, which provides fertiliser. These sorts of relationships are very important, probably much more important than just simply putting a plant in the ground,” he said.

“So this is one of the things where you can actually help to start putting the microbiology back in the soil in your garden.”

The spring and autumn plant sales are the main source of income for the Friends of the Botanic Gardens, which raises money to make improvements and additions to the Orange Botanic Gardens.