Plant groups for Australian gardens

Plants on this site are grouped by the job they do in a garden rather than by botanical family, because that is how planting decisions are actually made. Nobody stands in a bed wondering what to put in the Myrtaceae position; they wonder what will screen a fence, hold a bank, shade a window or fill the front of a border.

The six groups

• Native and garden shrubsSixteen shrubs from 0.5 m to 4 m. Structure, screening and the bulk of a bed's permanent planting.
• GroundcoversEleven low spreaders from 0.05 m to 0.3 m. Living mulch for bare soil, slopes and border fronts.
• ClimbersEleven vines for fences, walls and pergolas, with the support each one needs.
• Small treesThirteen trees maturing between 5 m and 8 m. Shade, scale and canopy on a suburban block.
• Grasses and strappy-leaf plantsEleven clumping plants for texture, movement and erosion control at very low maintenance.
• Vegetable bedsEleven crops, with bed construction, spacing, watering and sowing seasons by zone.

How the groups fit together

A bed that works usually has three layers. Trees or tall shrubs set the ceiling and decide how much sun reaches everything else. Shrubs and clumping plants fill the middle, hold the shape of the bed through the year and do the screening. Groundcovers close the floor so bare soil is not exposed to sun, rain and weed seed. Leave any one of those layers out and the bed needs more work, not less: a bed of shrubs over bare mulch needs mulching twice a year forever, and a bed of groundcover with no structure disappears in winter.

Climbers sit outside that stack. They cover a vertical plane and take almost no ground area, which makes them the most space-efficient option in a narrow garden, provided there is something sound to hold them up and someone willing to cut them back once a year.

Choosing across groups

The selection sequence is the same whichever group you are in. Mature width first, because it decides whether the plant fits the space and cannot be negotiated afterwards by pruning. Drainage tolerance second, because a species that needs free drainage will die in ground that holds water regardless of anything else you do. Water need third, so that the whole bed can sit on one watering regime rather than three. Appearance last.

Use the plant finder to work across all six groups at once. It filters the same 73 plants by climate zone, light, soil, water need and type, and lets you compare three side by side. The figures there are the same figures used on the group pages; there is one dataset behind both.

Reading the specimen labels

Every plant on the group pages is set out the same way: common name, botanical name in italics, a row of compact labels, a description, and the climate zones it suits. The labels are deliberately short and always carry text rather than relying on colour, so they read the same in any theme and for anyone using a screen reader.

Water is one of three categories. Low means the plant needs no supplementary water after roughly two years in the ground, in the zones listed for it. Moderate means occasional deep watering through dry spells. Regular means it never stops needing water and should be planted where that is easy. None of these describe the establishment period: everything needs regular water for its first two summers.

Size is given as mature height by mature width in open ground in average conditions. Treat it as a planning range rather than a specification. The same species finishes noticeably smaller in a container, in shade, in shallow soil or in a windy position, and noticeably larger in deep soil with reliable moisture. Width is the number to plan the bed around.

Soil lists what the plant will accept. Where it says needs free drainage, read that as a warning rather than a preference. Frost tolerant means it survives light to moderate frost without protection in an average winter, not that it will take a severe frost on an exposed valley floor. Coastal means it tolerates salt-laden wind, which is a harsher filter than either heat or cold.

Evergreen or deciduous is the last label. Deciduous is not a lesser option: a deciduous tree or vine on the northern or western side of a building shades it in summer and lets the sun through in winter, which no evergreen can do.

What is and is not on this site

These lists are a working reference, not a catalogue of everything that grows in Australia. They favour species that are widely available, well documented and dependable across a reasonable range of conditions, and they deliberately exclude anything declared a weed in any Australian state, along with any species subject to legal control.

We do not name nurseries, garden centres or suppliers, and we do not carry affiliate links. We do not discuss pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or insecticides in any form, and pest and weed pressure is addressed here through spacing, air movement, watering practice, mulch, barriers and hand removal. We make no health, medicinal or edibility claims about any plant on this site, and we do not cover foraging.

Before you plant anything

Two checks are worth making every time. First, confirm the species is not a declared weed in your state or region; several attractive and widely sold plants are restricted in some jurisdictions and not others. Second, if you are moving plants, cuttings, seed or soil between states or regions, check current biosecurity restrictions with your state or territory service — the rules change, and they exist for good reason.

Then check the ground itself. Read soil and mulch to identify what you are planting into, and watering and drainage if any part of the garden stays wet after rain. Those two pages will save more plants than any amount of careful species selection.