About Neighbourhood Palette
Get to know your local plant neighbourhood.
Every site has long-time locals: the plants of the communities that grew there before colonisation, in landscapes Aboriginal people have lived with and cared for over many thousands of years. Neighbourhood Palette helps you get to know them. Give it a site in Victoria or Greater Sydney and it finds those plants, from the site and the ecologies next door, and turns them into a planting palette you can refine and export. It also works in reverse, checking your own plant list for evidence that each species is local.
How it works
01Site
Type an address or click the map, and set a search radius (15 km by default). Address search uses OpenStreetMap and is limited to Victoria and New South Wales. The tool works out which state the site is in and uses that state's data.
02Plant communities near the site
Every state maps the plant communities that covered the land before colonisation, around 1750. In Victoria, the environment department (DEECA) calls these communities Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs), such as Plains Grassy Woodland. In New South Wales, the environment department (DCCEEW) calls them Plant Community Types (PCTs), such as Cumberland Shale Plains Woodland, and maps their extent before clearing. The tool lists every plant community within your radius, nearest first, with its conservation status (in New South Wales, how much of it has been cleared and whether it is part of a threatened ecological community). You choose the ones that suit your site, which lets you draw on neighbouring ecologies, not only the one directly underneath.
03Reference species lists
For each plant community, the state publishes a reference description of that vegetation in good condition, including its typical species. In Victoria these are called EVC benchmarks, and they vary by bioregion. The tool holds the benchmarks for six bioregions around Greater Melbourne, plus the statewide wetland benchmarks, and pulls the species for each community you selected.
In New South Wales, each PCT is defined from vegetation survey plots, and BioNet publishes every native species recorded in those plots with its growth form and the share of plots it was found in. That share is a useful guide: a species in 90% of plots is a backbone of the community, one in 2% is occasional. The tool holds these lists for the communities of the Sydney Basin bioregion, and by default includes species found in at least 10% of a community's plots.
04Local sightings
The reference lists say what should grow here. They are generalised reference lists for a whole bioregion, written to assess vegetation condition, so they name only the typical species. To show what has actually been found near your site, the tool fetches plant sightings around it from the state's database of flora observations, each marked native or introduced: the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas (VBA) in Victoria, and the BioNet Atlas in New South Wales. These sightings:
- fill gaps by picking up genuinely local species that reference lists rarely name, such as less common herbs, lilies, orchids, sedges and small shrubs;
- add a second line of evidence, so a plant that isn't on a reference list but has been recorded as native nearby is still supported;
- ground the list in place: a reference-list species that has also been recorded near the site is stronger evidence that it belongs there.
In the VBA, native means native to Victoria, not necessarily indigenous to your site. Some records are planted or escaped garden natives growing outside their natural range. Sweet Pittosporum, for example, is a Victorian native but a weed around Melbourne. Records can also be old or have low location accuracy. For these reasons, species supported only by local records are treated as supporting evidence, not proof. A palette is most defensible when the benchmarks and the local records agree.
05Species list
Everything is merged into one list. Outdated botanical names are updated to current ones, and species are grouped by layer: trees, shrubs, grasses, herbs, ferns and climbers. Each species shows its life form, which reference lists name it, whether it has been recorded nearby, its common name, and a link to VicFlora. You can filter the list, leave species out, optionally add local natives that no reference list names, and export it to Excel or CSV.
06Check a palette
Paste in your own plant list, and each species is given an evidence category (below), with notes. The results can be exported.
Evidence categories
Each plant in a palette check gets one category. It describes how well the selected sources support the plant as indigenous to the site. It is not a judgement on whether it's a good plant.
In a reference list
Named in the reference species list of at least one plant community you selected (in Victoria, an EVC benchmark), under its current name or an older synonym. This is the strongest evidence the tool can give. The notes also flag an older name the list uses, a subspecies or variety it specifies (so you can confirm the nursery stock matches), and any species it marks as rare or threatened.
Recorded locally
Not in any selected reference list, but recorded as native in local sightings around the site (in Victoria, the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas). This is reasonable support, but check that the plant is genuinely indigenous to the area and not a planted or escaped native from elsewhere in the state.
Not established
The selected reference lists and local sightings give no evidence for it. That doesn't prove the plant isn't local: it may belong to a plant community you didn't select, or may never have been recorded nearby. It does mean the tool can't support it, so it needs other justification or a substitute.
Needs qualification
The entry can't be assessed as a straightforward species. This covers cultivars, even of species on a reference list, because a selected or bred form isn't local provenance; hybrids; genus-only entries such as Dianella sp., where the species isn't stated; and reference lists that name only a genus, in which case choose a locally indigenous species. D overrides the other categories: a cultivar of an A-listed species is still D, and its note says the parent species is on a reference list.
Weed flag
Shown alongside any category. If a selected reference list names the species as a typical weed of that vegetation, the tool flags it. This catches natives that become invasive outside their range, as well as introduced species.
What it's useful for
- Indigenous planting palettes for landscape, council and revegetation projects
- Checking a contractor's or nursery's plant list for local provenance
- Helping home gardeners plant what belongs in their area
What it's called in your state
Every Australian state maps the plant communities that grew before colonisation and describes the species typical of each, but each state uses its own names. Neighbourhood Palette uses the same plain terms everywhere and shows the state's own term alongside them. These systems are close equivalents, not identical: each was written for a slightly different purpose, and their species lists vary in depth.
| In this tool | Victoria | New South Wales |
|---|---|---|
| Plant community | Ecological Vegetation Class (EVC) | Plant Community Type (PCT) |
| Reference species list | EVC benchmark (DEECA) | PCT species list, from survey plots (BioNet Vegetation Classification) |
| Map before colonisation | Modelled 1750 EVCs (DEECA) | State Vegetation Type Map, pre-clearing (DCCEEW) |
| Local sightings | Victorian Biodiversity Atlas | BioNet Atlas |
The tool works out which state a site is in and uses that state's data.
Where the data comes from
- Modelled 1750 EVCs with bioregional conservation status (DEECA), fetched live
- Victorian Biodiversity Atlas flora records (DEECA), fetched live
- Bioregion EVC benchmarks (DEECA) and the wetland EVC benchmarks, September 2024 update, extracted from the published documents and stored in the tool
- NSW State Vegetation Type Map (Pre-Clearing) (DCCEEW), fetched live
- BioNet Vegetation Classification PCT species data (DCCEEW), downloaded from the BioNet web service and stored in the tool
- BioNet Atlas plant sightings (DCCEEW), fetched live
- Plant names: VicFlora (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria) and PlantNET (Botanic Gardens of Sydney)
- Address search: OpenStreetMap
Government data © State of Victoria and © State of New South Wales and DCCEEW, licensed CC BY 4.0. Address search © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Limitations
- The 1750 vegetation map is modelled, not surveyed. Confirm the vegetation on site.
- Coverage is currently Greater Melbourne's bioregions plus Victoria's wetland benchmarks, and the Sydney Basin bioregion in New South Wales. The rest of Victoria and New South Wales, and other states, are planned.
- Reference species lists are indicative, not exhaustive.
- This tool supports, and does not replace, a site assessment by a qualified landscape architect or ecologist.
Why “neighbourhood”?
These plants and their communities were part of this landscape long before colonisation, shaped over thousands of years by Country and by Aboriginal people's care. Much of that neighbourhood has since been cleared or built over. Getting to know its long-time locals is a first step to bringing some of them home.
To learn whose Country your site is on, see the Aboriginal Heritage Council's map of Registered Aboriginal Parties in Victoria, or find your Local Aboriginal Land Council in New South Wales.
About the creator
This tool was created by Chris Tankard, a Melbourne-based landscape architect.
Chris built it to replace the spreadsheets he used to put together indigenous planting palettes for his own projects: finding the vegetation that once grew on a site, gathering the reference species, checking them against local records, and documenting the evidence for each plant. Doing that by hand for every project was slow, and the reasoning behind each choice was hard to share.
The idea behind it is simple. Long before colonisation, these plant communities were shaped by Country and by the Aboriginal people who cared for it. Good landscape design starts by getting to know those plants.
Get in touch
Questions, feedback, a species that looks wrong, or a project you'd like to talk about? Send Chris a message.