Designing and managing biodiverse streetscapes: key lessons from the City of Melbourne

Abstract

Underutilised public spaces such as streetscapes offer substantial opportunities to integrate habitats that increase biodiversity into existing urban landscapes and create more ecologically connected cities. Cooperation and collaboration from diverse stakeholders are paramount to achieving this because growing conditions for plants in streetscapes are often much harsher than remnant habitats or urban parks and little is known about the horticultural performance of many native understorey species in these novel urban environments. This paper describes how the City of Melbourne collaborated with researchers from the University of Melbourne to develop and test a suite of understorey plant speci..