Good morning, and welcome to the 21st edition of our monthly newsletter, Reading Landscapes.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

Like us to discuss a photo of your landscape? Share it with us here.

Many of our landscapes have degraded to the point that they are no longer capable of managing water like they once did. Coupled with our changing weather patterns, we're faced with a growing list of consequences:

The numbers are sobering. But here's what connects them all: water.

Not the lack of it — the loss of it.

Making Our Rainfall Work Again

Research shows healthy ecosystems can absorb and retain most of the rain that falls on them. Meanwhile, degraded land? It's shedding water like a tin roof.

A global analysis of 89 field studies found that soils under perennial cover capture 60-70% of each storm, while intensively tilled soils capture barely 40%. Ranch studies across five US states show the same pattern: identical rainfall, yet well-managed paddocks absorb up to 55% more water than their neighbours.

Think about that. Same rain. Completely different outcomes.

Our rainfall hasn't vanished — our landscapes have simply lost the ability to hold it where plants need it. Every consequence we listed above? They all trace back to water moving too fast through our landscapes, taking our soil, nutrients, and future with it.

So how do we slow it down?

In this week's article, we break down:

🌊 How nature managed water for millions of years (and what we broke)

🛠️ The "soft engineering" toolkit for landscape rehydration

🐮 Why grazing management matters as much as earthworks

🌱 How to read your landscape's water patterns

💧 Practical steps to start rehydrating your land

👉 Read the full article: Landscape Rehydration - Making Your Rainfall Work Again

Because when you get water right, everything else starts to come good.

Our fourth Natural Sequence Farming Champion story takes us to Arrawatta Station on the New England Tablelands, where Susan Hendry is proving that sometimes the best infrastructure already exists – it just needs to be reimagined.

The Paradigm Shift

Five years ago, Susan bought a property with large drainage banks designed to move water off the landscape as quickly as possible. Rather than accepting this as the way things had to be, Susan asked a different question: What if we could retrofit the drainage system to work with the landscape rather than against it?

"At Arrawatta Station, we're changing the paradigm from the water drainage system to a landscape rehydration system," Susan explains. "I've retrofitted the drainage system into chains of ponds so that they can retain the water and let it slowly filter into the landscape."

The Opportunity

Natural Sequence Farming consultant Will Cannington sees massive potential for this approach: "When you look at the slopes region, 25% of the cleared country would be contour drained. So there's an opportunity there to create chains of ponds and slow that system down."

The work? Remarkably simple, 15 to 25 minutes with a front-end loader and chisel plough.

The Results

Land managers Kate and Ryan are seeing clear outcomes: "The area where the work has been done is the first to green up and the last to dry out. It's basically given us a second bite at the cherry, and that's money in the bank for us."

For Susan, it’s about the whole system - from soil organisms to plants to cattle to the nutrient-dense food we eat.

👉 Watch Susan's full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ASM_-Xofe8

👉 Read the complete case study: https://www.tarwynparktraining.com.au/p/the-hendry-s-at-arrawatta-station

This is the fourth story in our Rehydrate Australia series, sharing the journeys of farmers and land managers implementing Natural Sequence Farming across Australia.

Peter Andrews OAM spent his life trying to show people that there's a better way to work with the landscape. This documentary continues that mission — and it's proof that the work is happening, right now, all across Australia.

Let's Rehydrate Australia — together.

We'd love to hear your thoughts after you watch Susan’s story. Hit reply and let us know what resonates with you.

P.S. If you know someone who needs to see this — a farmer, a land manager, a council member, a friend who cares about the future of our landscapes — please share it with them. The more people who understand Natural Sequence Farming, the more landscapes we can help restore.

🔗 Subscribe to the channel: Tarwyn Park Training

🌏 Learn more: rehydrateaustralia.com

Have a plant you’d like to discuss? Share it with us here.

Common Names: American needle-grass, Uruguayan tussockgrass, Uruguayan needlegrass

Scientific Name: Nassella neesiana

Where in the Succession: Low Fertility Exploiter

I’ve had a couple of people ask me to do a deep dive on Chilean Needle Grass, so thank you for the suggestion - let’s get into it.

Chilean Needle Grass is a perennial tufted grass growing to 1-1.5 m tall. It is native to South America, specifically the southern half of the continent. It prefers temperate and semi-arid climates with at least 500 mm of annual rainfall, but it can also be found in subtropical climates.

It looks like Spear grass, and it belongs to the Tussock family, including Serrated Tussock.

Chilean Needle Grass is a low-fertility exploiter species.

Chilean Needle Grass is another of our perennial grass species that is very opportunistic, seeking landscapes with limited competition and diversity, using disturbance as its trigger to start growing and journey towards dominance where possible.

We will often find it growing with dominance in landscapes with the following conditions:

🐮 Alter our grazing. The best results in managing Chilean Needle Grass with a regenerative mindset have been achieved by changing livestock grazing patterns in areas with high density. In these situations, people have moved to high or ultra-high density grazing (a large number of animals in a small area), with regular movements followed by adequate recovery periods. This has opened up the opportunity for other species to return whilst starting to cycle the fertility in that area to help stimulate change.

Another potential option using livestock is incorporating other species into the site, especially chickens, which can provide a much higher-impact graze than cattle or sheep. They can also provide additional fertility to the site in the form of manure, particularly when fed an external grain feed source.

🚜 Use mechanical intervention. Because of its low palatability, in some situations, it can be difficult to achieve the exact results you’re after with livestock alone. In situations like this, we can use machinery to assist us with the task. After grazing a site with livestock, you can come in and slash or mulch the remaining vegetation, creating a clean slate for the next season of plants and, hopefully, some successional change.

⬆️ Increase our soil organic matter. Chilean Needle Grass often grows in soils low in organic matter and humus, which fits with its being a low-fertility exploiter. To assist in moving it to the next stage, we can increase our organic matter by promoting more material to the surface of our landscape (as discussed in the previous two options) or by bringing in external sources of organic matter to add to the system.

💦 Improve your landscape’s hydrology. In landscapes where Chilean Needle Grass is growing, it is often lower in soil moisture and hydrologically dysfunctional. We can focus on increasing soil moisture and retaining more water in the landscape. This can be done by increasing ground cover and organic matter to hold rainwater longer, and by constructing level contours to slow, spread, and retain water in your landscape rather than letting it be lost.

🍄‍🟫 Increase our soil fungal levels. Like other weed grasses (Giant Rat's Tail and Giant Parramatta Grass), there is the thought that Chilean Needle Grass has a preference for bacterially dominated soils. To help better balance our soils and push towards a more even balance between fungi and bacteria, we could feed the fungi with foods like complex sugars and proteins, fish hydrolysate, biochar, humic acid, and carbon sources like wood, paper, or cardboard.

🪨 As a Soil Indicator: Low available phosphorus, little soil humus, bacterially dominant soils, low soil fertility, slightly acidic soils

🐮 Livestock: At certain growth stages, Chilean Needle Grass can provide decent nutritional value for livestock. In a field experiment in the Northern Tablelands of NSW, the crude protein and digestible dry matter of Chilean Needle Grass were measured at 13-17% and 58-66%, respectively, in a grazing system that followed rotational grazing methods⁶.

In Argentina's Pampas Plains, Chilean Needle Grass is considered one of the most important winter-growing natives for its ability to withstand heavy grazing and drought whilst still providing a high-quality perennial feed source⁶.

💊 Medicinal: There are no documented medicinal uses of Chilean Needle Grass

🍽️ Consumption: There is no documented evidence of the plant being used for food.

A quick list of our favourite things we’ve been watching, reading, listening, and writing.

Food For The Future: A great article looking to the positives in the world of food, farming and the environment to see what is happening around the globe on the quest to create more resilient, healthy systems.

This Beaver Dam is So Huge, You Can See It from Space: Check out the largest beaver dam on Earth and get an idea of the powerful work these little creatures are doing and the benefits they have on their local environment, much like our own leaky weirs.

Trees Are So Weird: Trees really are fascinating. This video goes into the evolutionary journey and how they function as a living thing that is actually mostly dead - but still capable of pushing themselves towards being the largest living things on Earth.

Natural Sequence Farming Managing Water and Fertility Loss: Check out the YouTube premiere of our very own Stuart McWilliam and see the work that he has been up to at “Clearwater” in Glenmorgan - just one of the many properties he’s been busy implementing NSF at. We’re so lucky to have people like Stuart and the rest of our team of implementors out on the road helping get this knowledge put into action across our landscapes, because many hands make light work, and that is how we can create change in our landscapes and the way they’re managed.