Sydney Water: Plant Selector |
5 March 2007 7:30 PM
Sydney Water Corporation supplies water and sewerage services to the greater Sydney Region and, like most water authorities, is encouraging increased water conservation. One inititive being promoted is a 'Plant Selector' which is designed to help people choose plants that are suited to local soil and weather conditions thereby saving water "without restricting your choice of garden design".The selector allows the user to seach for suitable plants via an interactive map based on 5 'zones': Hawkesbury Sandstone, Wianamatta Shale, Cumberland Plain, Blue Mountains, Illawarra. It's also possible to search the plant database by selecting a specific suburb from a drop down list. However, you won't get more precise recommendations by doing a 'suburb search' - the plants recommended will be the same for any suburb in a particular zone.
This is well and good except when the database puts the suburbs in the wrong zone. For example, Penrith, Emu Plains and Castlereagh are adjacent to the Nepean River but are included in the 'Blue Mountains' zone. That's certainly going to result in some inappropriate recommendations. Strangely Richmond, also adjacent to the River, goes into the correct 'Cumberland Plain' zone.
I also think that plants like Acacia baileyana and Acacia podylarifolia, both weeds in Sydney and Blue Mountains areas, should not be included in the database. True, the descriptions warn about potential invasiveness if planted near bushland but why suggest them at all? It's not as if there aren't non-invasive alternatives.
These issues aside, the idea is good, the results seem reasonable and the plant descriptions that I checked are also reasonably accurate.
The database comprises about 2000 species and cultivars (native and non-native) and rates each on a scale of 1 to 3 for water requitrements.
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