Landscaping with Australian Rainforest Plants

Ralph Bailey and Julie Lake

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Available exclusively in Australia and New Zealand from Australian Academic Press

First published more than 30 years ago as Creating an Australian Rainforest Garden, and later expanded and re-titled Gardening with Australian Rainforest Plants, this pioneering work became one of Australia’s most respected practical references on native rainforest plants. Now revised and expanded, it returns to print under a new title, Landscaping with Australian Rainforest Plants.

Drawing on the combined expertise of award-winning architect Ralph Bailey and horticultural writer Julie Lake, the book explores the remarkable diversity of Australia's rainforest flora and its use in landscape design. It combines practical horticultural knowledge with landscape design principles to help readers select, establish and use Australian rainforest plants with confidence.

Covering more than 500 Australian rainforest plants, the book helps readers choose the right species for particular landscape situations and design objectives. Throughout the book, themed plant lists help readers identify suitable species for street planting, windbreaks, coastal gardens, swimming pools, edible gardens and many other landscape applications.

The book also features more than 100 Favourite Rainforest Plants, presented in a fully illustrated section that brings together essential information on cultivation, propagation, growing requirements and ornamental features in an easy-to-use format.

With colour photographs throughout, original artwork by Ralph Bailey, updated plant nomenclature, and comprehensive scientific and common-name indexes, this is an authoritative practical reference for gardeners, landscape architects, designers, arborists, students and councils.

See inside the book — download the 24-page preview

(Includes full contents and preface, 10 pages from Chapter 2, sample Favourites pages and index extract.)

About the Authors

Ralph Bailey BArch (Hons), LFRAIA is an award-winning architect and former partner of Guymer Bailey Architects and Landscape Architects. During a career spanning more than four decades, he has combined a passion for Australian plants with a deep interest in environmentally sensitive landscape design. Among the practice's best-known projects is the award-winning Kingfisher Bay Resort and Village on K'gari (Fraser Island), internationally recognised for its successful integration of architecture with its natural landscape. Ralph has written extensively on Australian plants, rainforest plants, bush foods and ecologically sensitive design. He is also the author of Perfumed and Aromatic Australian Plants.

Julie Lake B As is a journalist, horticulturalist and author with a long-standing interest in Australian rainforest plants and ecology. Living on Tamborine Mountain in south-east Queensland, she has spent many years studying, writing about and photographing the plants, birds and ecology of the subtropical rainforest. She is the author of several books, as well as the novel Lyrebird Mountain, inspired by the rainforest environment in which she lives. Her interests also include bushwalking, music, palaeontology and history.

ISBN: 9781923114241

Large-format softcover, full colour, 200 pages

To be released September 2026