Native plant guide for Canterbury goes online — LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA

It’s been a 26 year labour of love but finally Di Lucas’ native plant guide is an online tool for Cantabrians to use.

The project was first commissioned in 1995 by community boards through the Ōtautahi Christchurch *Agenda 21 committee, which promotes greater native biodiversity.

Lucas says she’s “thrilled” to have further progressed the project, to have it online on the Christchurch City Council website in an interactive form. Users type in their address to find the ecosystem the site belongs in and a list of plants native to that site.

“I hope that people use it inspirationally, that they celebrate the underlying nature of place through this,” she says.

“Aotearoa NZ have all these projects for people to improve nature, but they often don’t know what’s local. Even some designers don’t know what’s local. And it’s important to know species’ tolerances, and how to stage their establishment. The ecosystem typology plant lists show what’s local not just to Canterbury or Christchurch but local to your street.”

“We’ve utilised the land typing approach that we’ve applied in most regions of the country at various scales. We’ve worked with scientists on and off for decades on this Ōtautahi Christchurch project. It’s taken quite of bit of concentrated focus. It’s been fascinating.”

There are big variations across the plains’ city depending on soil type and their associated biota. “We have stony, dry country; we’ve got moist, deep soils with spring-fed land; and, then we’ve got dry, sand country interwoven with wetland swales.”

From the mid-nineties Lucas Associates had provided maps, booklets and sets of the 21 different plant lists through council offices – anyone could get a “shopping list” of the native plants for their site. That all disappeared with the earthquakes.

The quakes also revealed the buried forests hidden under the lacerated earth so Lucas says. “Some drilling gangs would text me if they hit anything interesting. And they’d say whether or not I needed to bring a trailer,” she laughs. Having ancient podocarp logs and stumps evident helped show people that Christchurch had not been “just a flax swamp” as many assumed.

She’s also added in the fire resilience of species because of the increasing fire risk due to climate change.

So far only the Plains’ ecosystems are online but next to be uploaded will be the Hills’ guide - from the lush deep valleys to the craggy cliffs, outcrops and ridges, all of which have completely different ecosystems.

Lucas recommends every local authority have such an online resource unique to their region. “New Zealand is so interesting, it’s so diverse. It’s a land of little landscapes. And through response to natural diversity, landscape architecture is a key means to show that.”

You can find a link to the guide here.

*Agenda 21 is a comprehensive, non-binding plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organisations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment. It’s a product of the 1992 Earth Summit.