Sustainable Landscapes Plant Selector

Overview

The Landscapes Alive Plant Selector is an initiative of the Sustainable Landscapes Project. Research and Development has been assisted by the Local Government Research and Development Scheme.

The Plant Selector has been conceived and designed to be a comprehensive, relevant and user-friendly resource to enable Local Government Councils and other landscape design practitioners to achieve more sustainable landscapes through improved plant selections.

Requirements

The site needed to allow you to search by council area, suburb, botanical name or to conduct a less specific search of all plants in the database.

Several other options where required such as a keyword search, access to Google images for each plant result and other special requirements which allow plants to only be searched with the environmental conditions suiting each particular planting location. These conditions may include any soil modification, aspect, drainage, fire risk and climate including rainfall patterns, temperatures and wind exposure.

Project Outcome

The plant selector is a web based online database currently consisting of over 1000 species, plants include local indigenous, Australian native and exotic plants that fulfil the two criteria of having low supplementary water requirements once established and being non-invasive in the local area where they are recommended to be planted.

Detailed information is provided about each plant including landscape suitability, soil and light preferences, physical appearance, growth habits, attraction for native fauna, common landscaping uses and other qualities and cautions.

This information is highly relevant to all landscapes under the care and control of Local Government as well as to developers, designers and other industry professionals. Access to improved plants selections is critical to achieving sustainable urban landscapes.

During the coming months the database will be expanded and regional and rural Council areas will be activated.