Gardening Methods

Plants for under trees? NZ native suggestions?

Hi, I moved into a house with a wilderness of a garden, complete with rusty iron bath tub in the backyard. We got rid of the tub, and are left with two trees at the back of the section (one silver birch, one lacewood). They sit in front of an ugly concrete block fence, and the whole back of the section where they are is mounded up on a slight slope where the previous owners buried all the bricks for the chimney they knocked out. The area in front of the trees is so choked with tree roots I can’t even dig it. I want to make it look ok, and have it hold up to kids and a dog, and I was thinking of skimming the weeds off the top, covering the lot with weedmat and bark chips and planting some native plants in the gaps between the tree roots. Would these grow between tree roots? I don’t really have the money for a bigger solution than this, so any cheap quick fix ideas would be great.

Bird of Paradise always in filtered sunlight under trees, like Mesquite trees.

Using Native Plants in Your SWFL Garden – part 3