Gardening in a climate crisis: how to be a green thumb when old rules no longer apply

Around Australia, plants are changing the way they grow due to the climate crisis, sometimes flowering before their pollinators are around. Photograph: Stephanie Jackson/Australian insects collection/Alamy

The sun shone on Melbourne’s gardens in May – and kept shining. Warm-weather plants that had begun to die back in expectation of winter got a second wind. Basil started sprouting leaves again and roses shot new buds. The state’s second-warmest May on record also confounded cold-weather plants starting to make their way out of the ground. Was it time to bloom or sink back underground?

Meanwhile, in the state’s south-west, dry earth became even drier, and raised the risk of unseasonal fire. At the same time, in coastal parts of New South Wales and Queensland, it didn’t just rain but it poured.