The suburbs are the most cleared, most depleted land in the country — which makes them the place where regeneration matters most. Healing Country is a movement to return indigenous ecology to Australian gardens, record what returns, and connect the gardens into living corridors.
Every suburban block once belonged to an ecological community — a specific assemblage of canopy, understorey and groundcover that held soil, water and life together. Most of it is gone. But the land remembers, the records exist, and the plants are still grown nearby.
Government ecological mapping tells us what grew on almost every address before clearing. The first question is always the same: what once grew here?
Suburbia holds more garden area than parkland. Each block is small; together they are the largest restoration opportunity in the city.
A recorded, verified ecological garden is measurable value — to councils, to biodiversity programs, and to the steward who tends it.
Each layer feeds the next — from knowing your land, to planting it, to proving it, to being rewarded for it, to joining it with the garden next door.
Ecological context for an address. Enter where you live and learn the Ecological Vegetation Class that held your ground before clearing — the first question: what once grew here?
findmyevc.com ↗From classification to garden. Plant assemblages matched to your habitat and site conditions — canopy to groundcover — turning an ecological record into a plantable design.
findmyecologicalgarden.com ↗The plants themselves. Local-provenance indigenous species, supplied from the Hawthorn nursery — grown for the ground they're returning to.
Visit the nursery ↗Proof. Baseline records, change over time, and verification pathways for ecological gardens — scored honestly across biodiversity, soil and water, habitat, connectivity and evidence.
ecologicalregistry.org ↗Reward. Mechanisms that recognise ecological stewardship and return value to stewards — because land that gives should give back to those who heal it.
In developmentScale. Connecting many gardens into credible, city-scale ecological value — street by street, until single gardens become corridors and corridors become Country healing.
In developmentA garden alone is habitat. Gardens connected are a corridor — and corridors are how ecology moves through a city. Birds don't read title boundaries. Insects don't stop at the fence line.
This movement began with a simple, slightly unreasonable idea: green ecological corridors running through the backyards of Melbourne. The Registry, the finders, the nursery and the reward layer are how we get there — one recorded garden at a time.
Discover the ecological community that once held your address — free, in under a minute — and see the indigenous species that belong there.
Find My EVCAlready growing an ecological garden? Put it on the record. Enrol on the Ecological Registry and join the network of stewards healing the suburbs.
Enrol on the RegistryHealing Country borrows a truth long held by First Nations peoples: that Country is living, and that caring for it heals land and people together. This movement works on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, whose care for Country spans tens of thousands of years.
We acknowledge Traditional Owners and Elders past and present, and we hold that any healing of this ground begins by listening to those who have always known it.