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Business Queensland states that fire ants are a category 1 restricted pest under the Biosecurity Act 2014, and that fire ant biosecurity zones are in place in areas of Queensland to restrict the movement of materials that could spread fire ants. It also states that the Biosecurity Regulation 2016 prescribes procedures that you must follow when moving or storing a fire ant carrier, and that entities involved in moving or storing carriers must take all reasonable steps to ensure they do not spread fire ants.

The materials that count as carriers are the ordinary contents of a landscape supplier's yard: soil, mulch, hay, manure, turf, potted plants and quarry products. The obligation is not limited to the supplier. If you are having material delivered from within a zone, moving material off your own property, or buying a trailer load yourself, the general biosecurity obligation applies to you as well.

Because zone boundaries are reviewed and updated, the current published map is the only reliable reference. Ask the supplier where the material was sourced and whether it was produced or treated in a way that satisfies the movement requirements, and keep the docket. Interstate movement of these materials is subject to its own controls, so the answer changes again if the load crosses a border.

Bulk landscape materials are sold under names that are not standardised between suppliers, which is why two yards will sell you very different products under the same description. Australian Standards exist for the main categories — soils for landscaping and garden use, and composts, soil conditioners and mulches — and a supplier who tells you which standard their product is produced to is giving you something you can hold them to. A supplier who cannot is selling you a name.

Because this is a supply of goods, the Australian Consumer Law applies. The ACCC states that goods must be of acceptable quality, meaning safe, durable and free from defects, and that any description of a product by a business must be accurate, whether written or spoken. If the load delivered is not the product described, the description guarantee is engaged. Photograph the load on delivery, keep the docket, and raise a problem straight away rather than after you have spread it.

The one thing worth insisting on with imported soil and fill is provenance. Material dug from an unknown site can carry weed seed, contamination or construction debris, and none of that is visible from the top of a heap.

Mulch does the most good when it goes on before the heat rather than during it. Applied to moist soil in autumn or early spring, it holds the moisture that is already there; applied to dry soil in January, it can shed a light rain event before it reaches the roots. Water the bed well before mulching, and keep the mulch off the trunks and stems.

Soil and fill are best moved when the ground is not saturated. A tipper on a wet lawn leaves ruts that last a season, and wet clay handled at the wrong time loses the structure you were trying to build. In the wet season in northern Australia, and after prolonged rain anywhere, it is worth delaying a delivery rather than fighting the conditions.

There is a biosecurity dimension to timing too. Fire ant activity and the surveillance and treatment programme both run on a seasonal rhythm, and zone boundaries are reviewed and updated, so a supplier's answer about sourcing in one month is not automatically their answer in another.