Renewals for Nature: City of Melbourne garden bed inventory 2024

This dataset contains a detailed inventory of all garden beds assets (over 4,100) managed by City of Melbourne, including their condition, vegetation attributes and ecological function. This data was collected by the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (Horticulture Team Cranbourne) between 2023 and 2024.

The assessments included visiting all mapped ‘shrub bed assets’ across the municipality and recording data including bed type (annual, bioretention, bulb meadow, bulb understory, groundcover, hedge, mulch, perennial beds) bed type origin (indigenous, native, exotic, mixed), spatial dimensions, plant inventory (complete list of understorey species including scientific and common names, origin, form, and level of certainty for identification), habitat condition (dominant species and presence of logs and rocks), plant cover and plant condition, mulch condition, weed cover, infrastructure condition, and an overall condition rating.

This dataset is based on the “Renewals for Nature Garden Bed Inventory and Condition Assessment Report 2024” produced by R. Larke, M. Velthoven, M. Henderson, M. Burns and A. Little of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. For documented methods please refer to the report (attached).

Shapefiles of City of Melbourne’s mapped ‘shrub bed assets’ across the municipality have also been provided to assist with linking shrub bed assets that were assessed and their location.

The data and report was completed in June 2024.

Projected Coordinate System: GDA2020 MGA Zone 55