Editorial policy

This page sets out how information on Silver Vista is compiled, checked and corrected, how often it is reviewed, how to report an error, and what commercial relationships we do and do not have. It applies to every page on the site.

Who is responsible

Silver Vista is written and edited by three people: Marion Ashcroft, Dev Raghunathan and Hollie Ngata. Their backgrounds and the parts of the site each of them writes are set out on the about page. There is no external editorial board, no contributed content, and no material written by anyone outside those three. Where a practical guide has a named author and a publication date at the top, that is the person who wrote it and stands behind it.

None of us hold professional horticultural qualifications, licences or association memberships, and we do not claim any. What we have is long practical experience in three very different Australian climates, and we write within it.

How plant information is compiled

All plant data on this site — botanical name, plant type, climate zones, light, soil, water need, mature height and width, frost and coastal tolerance, foliage type — is held in one dataset and rendered from it. The plant finder, the group pages and the zone pages all read from that single source, which is why the figures agree across the site. When a figure is corrected, it changes everywhere at once.

Species are included on three criteria: they are widely grown in Australia, they are well documented, and they perform reliably across a reasonable range of conditions. We exclude anything declared a weed in any Australian state or territory, anything subject to legal control, and anything that only performs within a very narrow band of conditions. Botanical names are checked against currently accepted nomenclature; where a name has changed, we use the current one.

Sizes are given as mature dimensions in open ground in average conditions, and described that way on every page that uses them. They are planning ranges, not specifications. Water need describes what a plant requires after roughly two years in the ground, and we state separately and repeatedly that everything needs regular water through establishment.

Where we decline to give a number

Some figures cannot be given honestly at national scale, and we do not invent them. We do not publish last frost dates for specific towns, because they vary street by street and year by year. We do not publish watering allowances or restriction levels, because those are set by individual water authorities and change with storage. We do not publish prices for plants, soil or materials, because they vary by region and by season. We do not publish fertiliser rates, because they depend on the product.

In each of those cases the page says so and directs you to the body that holds the current answer, usually your local council or water authority. A plausible-looking number that is wrong is worse than an honest gap.

Subjects we do not cover

Some exclusions are editorial policy rather than oversight, and they are permanent.

We do not discuss pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or insecticides in any form, including brand names, active ingredients, application rates or methods. Pest and weed pressure on this site is addressed through crop rotation, spacing for air movement, watering practice, mulch, physical barriers, pruning and hand removal only.

We make no health, medicinal, therapeutic or nutritional claims about any plant. We do not cover foraging, wild plant identification for eating, or what to do after contact with plant material. Where a plant needs handling care, we say so in one neutral line and recommend gloves.

We do not cover government processes of any kind: permits, rebates, grants, exemptions or applications. Where local rules apply, we say that they apply and where to ask.

We do not cover fermentation, distillation, tobacco, gambling or firearms, and where a crop such as grapes appears on this site it appears as a plant to grow, nothing further.

Review cycle

Every page carries a review date at the top. Pages are reviewed at least once every twelve months, and the plant dataset is reviewed as a whole at the same time each year. When a page is corrected between scheduled reviews, its review date is updated to the date of the correction, so the date at the top of a page always reflects the last time a person actually checked it.

Reviews cover four things: whether botanical names are still current, whether stated sizes and water needs still match what we and readers observe, whether any species has since been declared a weed anywhere in Australia, and whether internal links and cross-references still resolve.

Reporting an error

Email hello@silvervistapro.com with the page address and what you believe is wrong. You do not need to be certain, and you do not need to explain why — if something reads oddly, that is worth telling us.

We check every report. Where a correction is warranted, we make it and update the page's review date. Where a factual figure changes materially — a size, a water need, a zone — we change it in the dataset so it updates across the site. Where we disagree with a report, we reply and say why. Corrections are the most useful mail we receive and we treat them accordingly.

Commercial relationships

Silver Vista carries no advertising, no sponsored content and no affiliate links. We accept no payment for coverage, inclusion or placement of any plant, product, supplier or service. We do not name nurseries, garden centres or retailers as recommendations anywhere on the site. We do not accept guest posts, link exchanges or paid placement of any kind, and approaches of that sort are read and not replied to.

The site is funded by its three founders. We do promote the site itself through paid search advertising — advertising we buy, not advertising we sell — and that has no bearing on the content of any page. If this arrangement ever changes, this page will say so before the change takes effect.

Original content

Everything on this site is written by the three named authors. We do not reproduce text from other gardening publications, nurseries, or government sources. The illustrations on this site are schematic diagrams we have drawn and are labelled as such; they are not photographs and are not presented as depicting any particular plant or garden. We do not publish reviews, ratings, testimonials or quotes attributed to people who do not exist, and we hold no awards.