Find your climate, find your garden
Almost every good gardening decision in Australia starts with climate. Select a zone below to explore its rainfall, temperature and the planting logic that follows from them.
Tropical
Hot and humid year-round with a pronounced wet season. Growth is fast and lush, but humidity, heavy rain and intense sun all shape what thrives here.
How to read your zone
These five categories are a practical simplification of Australia's geography, designed to help with gardening decisions rather than to draw precise boundaries. Many places sit between zones, and microclimates — a sheltered courtyard, a frost pocket, a windy ridge — can shift conditions within a single garden.
Use your zone as a starting filter, not a rulebook. It tells you which plants are worth considering and what challenges to plan for, after which local knowledge and observation do the fine-tuning.
Rainfall and temperature are the two levers. Together they explain most of what a zone demands of a plant — how much water it must endure without, and how much heat or cold it has to survive.
Rainfall patterns
It's not just how much rain falls, but when. A mediterranean zone and a temperate zone might receive similar annual totals, yet the mediterranean garden faces a long summer drought while the temperate one sees rain spread more evenly. Seasonality often matters as much as the total.
Temperature ranges
Both extremes count. Tropical plants may not tolerate frost; alpine plants may resent prolonged heat. Knowing your zone's typical highs and lows — and how sharply it swings between them — narrows the plant list quickly.
Plant suitability logic
Once rainfall and temperature are clear, plant choice becomes far simpler: favour species that evolved in, or are proven across, conditions like yours. That single habit underpins almost everything else in this guide.