Plant community paradigms: The missing links in design
By Erik van Zuilekom
The polarised debate over native versus exotic species frequently misses the fundamental question: does the landscape function as an integrated ecology, or merely as a collection of isolated individuals?¹ Plant failure in professional landscapes may occasionally stem from poor species choice, though it most frequently emerges from inappropriate ecological integration. This may present as poor species choice, though plants are not static entities, thus, it is often a lack of understanding of how to integrate plants that frequently leads to failure. When we design assemblages where stress disperses across multiple species fulfilling complementary roles, individual vulnerabilities reduce into collective resilience. For landscape professionals working across Australia’s climatic diversity and varied aesthetic contexts, this shift from selecting ‘the right plant’ to designing ‘the right relationships’ transforms both methodology and long-term outcomes.
The failure of isolation
Individual plants, regardless of origin or hardiness ratings, remain vulnerable when planted in ecological isolation. A drought-tolerant species still suffers without neighbouring plants moderating soil temperatures. A frost-hardy specimen still fails without windbreak protection during establishment. A pollution-tolerant street tree still declines when soil biology collapses from compaction and chemical contamination.
The landscape industry’s focus on individual plant performance via selecting species based on tolerance ratings, growth habits and maintenance requirements assumes plants succeed or fail independently. This contradicts fundamental ecological reality: in natural systems, no species thrives alone. Interdependence is not a poetic notion, it is the operational mechanism of all functional ecosystems.³
Consider how plants modify their immediate environment through transpiration, root exudates, leaf litter decomposition and physical structure. These modifications create microclimates, alter soil chemistry and biology, change water infiltration patterns and affect light quality and intensity. When we design with these interactions intentionally orchestrated, we are not simply ‘planting a garden’ we are engineering living systems that, over time, become progressively more resilient and adaptive.
Functional roles, not botanical names
Rather than asking ‘which species should I specify?’, the integrated design approach asks, ‘which functions does this site require?’ The answer involves multiple, overlapping categories, for which myriad native, indigenous and exotic species may fulfil each function:
Microclimate modifiers alter wind speed, temperature extremes, humidity levels, and radiation intensity. These pioneer functions create conditions enabling subsequent species establishment.
Soil regenerators break compaction through taproot action, fix atmospheric nitrogen, mine deep minerals and transport them to surface layers through leaf drop, and feed soil microbial communities through root exudates and organic matter contributions.
Structural diversifiers create vertical complexity through establishing canopy, sub-canopy, shrub and ground layers that multiply habitat niches and edge effects while optimising light penetration and rainfall interception.
Biological attractors provide nectar, pollen, fruits, seeds and habitat structures that support beneficial insects, birds and soil fauna that suppress pests, pollinate plants and accelerate nutrient cycling.
Aesthetic anchors deliver the visual outcomes through flowering displays, foliage colour, textural contrasts, seasonal interest, form, and spatial definition that satisfy human design requirements.
The critical insight: most plants fulfil multiple roles simultaneously, and there are many exotic or native species offering heightened performance to achieve each function, relative to the habitat conditions within which they evolved.
A nitrogen-fixing pioneer may also provide windbreak functions while producing copious amounts of organic matter if it is selected with awareness of the size, form, growth rate and productivity required of the species to fulfil each function. A deep-rooted soil regenerator also creates structural diversity and habitat. A flowering aesthetic anchor may also attract pollinators and beneficial predatory insects.
The designer’s task becomes that of identifying which combinations of functions the site requires, and how different growth rates and modes of colonisation each species offers. With this understanding of the species, the designer may then learn how to assemble species fulfilling those functions into complementary rather than competitive arrangements.
This is a move away from thinking of plants as static symbols or basic sculptural components in a landscape, and towards understanding that plants are agents of change that shape how soils, air, sunlight, and life-giving resources mobilise into adaptive and regenerative systems rather than static or unengaged ornamentation. This sets the entire trajectory of understanding how to develop low-maintenance, scalable and resilient solutions2.
Succession as regenerative technology
Conventional landscape design treats succession as decline: the garden looks best at installation and requires increasing intervention to maintain what might be defined as “peak” aesthetic within particular garden styles. Ecological design inverts this relationship by working with succession intentionally.
In degraded urban soils which may be compacted, biologically depleted, or contaminated, succession offers regenerative potential. Fast-growing pioneers tolerant of harsh conditions do not merely survive poor environments, they actively transform them. Root systems fracture compacted layers and create pore spaces functioning as organic highways deeper into soils. Leaf litter feeds nascent microbial populations, initially balancing and supporting the surface layers of soils, and descending over time to deeper strata once soil biology develops further. Nitrogen fixation enriches depleted soils, boosting beneficial soil microorganisms that further support plants, and feed ever-increasing healthy soil ecologies that improve soil physical traits. Transpiration and shading moderate temperature extremes, opening soils for healthy fungal influx that decomposes accumulated organics and feeds into healthy root systems as pest-moderating beneficial symbioses. These are not incidental effects; they are the functional mechanisms of succession that, as a process, evolved to generate dynamic improvements to disturbed ecosystems.⁴
Syntropic design harnesses this regenerative capacity by sequencing species with increasing resource requirements. Syntropic processes build order from chaos by turning degraded sites into self-organising systems. This works equally in food gardens, ornamental landscapes, and revegetation projects.
The key understanding is that syntropic processes are built on entropic processes, such as senescence and decomposition, which are those processes that make resources available to growing and developing systems. Syntropy and entropy are inseparable.
It may seem counterintuitive that self-organising, dynamic, progressive and abundant systems exhibiting syntropy are reliant on entropy, the death, decomposition and disorder of organic materials denaturing into nutrients. Gardens that repeatedly remove accumulating organics are essentially holding systems back from developing coherence, order, adaptability and evolution. Returning to broadcast mulch to suppress weeds is a conundrum of taking two steps backwards to take one step forward.
The role of the informed designer is not to waste these system-building resources, but rather to reorganise them into patterns that retain, apply and distribute them appropriately to achieve syntropic development whilst creatively meeting a desired garden aesthetic.
Syntropy offers cumulative benefits, capable of compounding on autopilot, if integrated and applied appropriately within an ecological design framework. This is one of the few areas in life where compound growth is possible.
Allow gardens to grow their own mulch. Converting sunlight and air into organic material, allows us to wean ourselves off synthetic inputs that frequently cause the demise of soil microbiology and prevent gardens from generating pest and disease resistance in tandem with nutrient balancing and ecological resilience. Self-produced organic mulches can be produced and organised to be aesthetically pleasing to suit garden styles.
Pioneers establish in minimal conditions and improve them. As soil structure, biological activity, organic matter, and water-holding capacity increase, secondary species establish within the modified environment. These contribute deeper roots, greater biomass production, and more complex habitat structures, further accelerating soil development. Eventually, climax species with the highest resource demands can establish in conditions that the pioneers created5.
Understanding syntropy and entropy is key to wielding natural processes effectively.
This is not theoretical; it is observable in any unmanaged vacant urban lot, manicured garden, and remnant habitats. What appears as ‘weed invasion’ is actually sophisticated ecological restoration occurring without human direction. Rather than fighting it, the designer’s opportunity lies in directing this process towards desired aesthetic and functional outcomes.
Species interactions and stress dissipation
In integrated communities, stress affecting individual plants such as harsh sun, deep shade, parching winds or flooding, disperses across the assemblage rather than concentrating on isolated specimens. During drought, deep-rooted species access subsoil moisture and create humid microclimates through transpiration, and protect shallow-rooted neighbours. During heat waves, canopy species shade understory layers and reduce thermal stress. During cold snaps, dense planting and mulch layers moderate soil temperature fluctuations. This, in turn, bolsters soil microbiology (e.g. beneficial fungal and biological networks) that reduces stress on plants by regulating moisture and nutrient supply, and availability of these for ease of uptake.⁸ During pest outbreaks, beneficial predator populations maintained by diverse flowering species suppress damage before it becomes critical.
This stress dissipation represents the pragmatic outcome of biodiversity. Not ‘biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake’, but biodiversity as functional insurance – the ecological equivalent of redundant engineering systems. When one component fails, others compensate.²⁵
The skill level of the designer or gardener lies in structuring and integrating species into connected communities of guilds or consortia that reinforce and trigger dynamic adaptation.
The professional application: integrated designs require less intervention because they’re inherently self-regulating. Pest problems are resolved through predator-prey dynamics. Nutrient deficiencies are corrected through nitrogen fixation and nutrient cycling. Water stress is moderated through microclimate modification. The landscape becomes progressively more stable, not progressively more fragile.
Adaptability through designed flexibility
Climate variability increasingly challenges fixed landscape designs, whilst a planting scheme optimised for average conditions fails during extremes. Ecological communities, conversely, demonstrate adaptive flexibility: they contract during stress periods and expand during favourable conditions.
This pulsing capacity emerges from having species with different stress tolerances occupying the same space. It is significantly strengthened through zoning plantings of tailored species selections, to produce horizontal and vertical layering as supportive and exposure-moderating systems.
Every garden area is represented by higher, intermediate and lower exposure zones, in concentric layers forming a perimeter to a core. Similarly, every shrub border, copse of trees, woodland or rainforest, has a protected core with an outer perimeter of species that fluctuate with wind, storm, drought and heat stress, and protect the entire garden colony.
This approach, which I term Adaptive Succession Zonation (ASZ) or Adaptive Facilitation Zonation (AFZ), recognises that every landscape naturally organises into exposure gradients. ASZ/AFZ is a design framework that intentionally structures plantings to harness these gradients, creating self-organising communities where outer zones facilitate the establishment of inner zones through microclimate modification, soil improvement, and stress buffering. Rather than fighting natural zonation patterns, ASZ/AFZ works with them to progressively build more resilient and complex ecosystems from perimeter to core.⁶
During drought, moisture-demanding species reduce leaf area, slow growth or enter dormancy, while drought-tolerant species expand into vacated niches. When rainfall returns, the relationship reverses. The visible garden appears relatively stable, but the underlying community constantly adjusts species dominance in response to conditions.
Designers can intentionally build this flexibility by including species representing a stress-tolerance spectrum within each functional category. Rather than specifying ‘drought-tolerant groundcover’, specify a groundcover guild that includes species with pragmatic supportive roles to each neighbouring species. The guild self-adjusts and spreads stress loading across a diverse species palette that responds to actual site conditions and seasonal variability and maintains groundcover function despite fluctuating moisture availability.
Application across aesthetic contexts
The criticism of ecological design typically centres on aesthetics: ‘It looks wild/messy/uncontrolled.’ This assumes ecological function and aesthetic refinement occupy opposite ends of a spectrum. They do not.
Formal gardens: Geometric layouts, clipped hedges, and controlled plant forms can integrate ecological function without compromising formality. Hedgerows specified as mixed-species assemblages rather than monocultures provide the same crisp architectural lines while incorporating nitrogen fixers, pest predator attractors, and soil regenerators. Formal parterre beds designed with functional guilds rather than colour-coordinated annuals deliver identical visual geometry with dramatically reduced maintenance inputs. The aesthetic reads as formal while the ecological infrastructure operates invisibly. Limitations are merely due to unrefined design methodologies or a lack of imagination. There is an entire area of design expertise here, with exciting opportunities awaiting open-minded and creative designers, and garden managers, to develop.
Cottage gardens: The romantic profusion of cottage style (layered plantings, mixed textures, billowing forms) naturally accommodates ecological thinking. The aesthetic already celebrates diversity and relaxed growth habits. Designing cottage gardens with functional roles intentionally distributed across the planting simply makes explicit what the style implicitly contained: structural diversifiers creating vertical complexity, nitrogen fixers enriching soil, pest predator attractors maintaining plant health, and aesthetic anchors providing continuous flowering.
Wild-style gardens: Naturalistic plantings mimicking indigenous plant communities are where ecological design and aesthetic intention align most obviously. But even here, the designer adds value by understanding which functional roles support the aesthetic goal. Wild-style gardens need not be random assemblages. They can be developed carefully and orchestrated to create perceived spontaneity while maintaining legibility and preventing dominance by aggressive colonisers.
Furthermore, indigenous, native and exotic plantings can be employed within ecological design frameworks that celebrate strengths, and species with enhanced natural traits that evolved within harsher habitats than the host garden presents.
Contemporary minimalist: Restrained palettes, repeated structural elements, and emphasised negative space often define a contemporary style. Ecological function integrates through careful species selection within the limited palette. A minimalist courtyard might feature three species repeated extensively but those three represent complementary functional roles: one providing soil regeneration, one creating structural complexity, and one attracting beneficial fauna. The aesthetic may read as refined simplicity, whilst the ecology may be designed to operate efficiently within constraint.
Urban, rural, and parkland applications
The scale and context vary, but the principles remain consistent.
Smaller urban residential gardens: Space constraints and proximity to buildings require carefully managed succession. Pioneer species establish quickly, improve soils, and then transition to more refined species as conditions permit. Small gardens do not often accommodate full pioneer-to-climax sequences, though they certainly can host succession principles at a compressed scale. I often encounter situations where limited space leads me to use surrounding architecture as part of the ecological structure of plantings. A wall, a corner, or a roof overhang often offer opportunities to be applied as structural components akin to protective tree trunks, cliff faces, or boulders in the landscape. Each niche is an opportunity to structure an ecological unfolding that is dynamic and adaptive, over space and time.
Larger rural properties: Larger properties often permit full expression of larger-scaled, zoned communities. Outer perimeters may face maximum exposure and establish first with hardy pioneers. Interior zones develop more slowly within the shelter created by outer zones. The property visibly matures from the edges inward, with each zone presenting opportunities for refined aesthetic outcomes culminating in the most protected core areas. This may be inverted with clever design methods, to provide a smooth transition between species selections, zones and functions, pending the nature of site exposures.
Public parklands: Maintenance budgets and community expectations shape design parameters, but ecological approaches have the potential to reduce long-term costs. Park zones experiencing heavy use require different species assemblages than less trafficable areas, but both benefit from designing functional communities rather than specimen collections. High-visibility entries might feature formal aesthetics with hidden ecological infrastructure, while back-of-park areas can display wilder expressions of the same ecological principles. This approach reduces the chances of positioning species in isolation rather than understanding that each species requires integration within guilds or consortia to bolster long-term health and resiliency.
Conclusion
The native-versus-exotic debate distracts from the fundamental design question: does this landscape function as an integrated ecology where species interactions build resilience, or as a collection of isolated individuals requiring perpetual intervention? When we design with clear functional goals such as soil regeneration, microclimate modification, stress dissipation, habitat creation, adaptive flexibility, etc., and assemble species fulfilling those goals in complementary relationships, origin may become secondary to performance.
Similarly, the origin of species only improves outcomes when the species are applied in a manner that respects and enables their genetic imperatives that are most clearly observable to be learned from, through studying them within their natural habitats.
This approach does not reject aesthetic refinement for ecological purity. It recognises that aesthetics and ecology emerge from the same source: spatial relationships, temporal sequences and functional integration. Whether designing formal corporate landscapes, romantic cottage gardens or naturalistic parklands, the principles remain: understand functions, design relationships, work with succession, build redundancy and create adaptability.
The outcome is landscapes that mature rather than decline, adapt rather than fail, and require less intervention over time while delivering richer aesthetic and ecological outcomes. That is not a compromise between beauty and function, it is recognising they were never separate in the first place.
References
- Prendergast, K. S., Tomlinson, S., Dixon, K. W., & Bateman, P. W. (2022). Native flora receive more visits than exotics from bees, especially native bees, in an urbanised biodiversity hotspot. Pacific Conservation Biology, 28(6), 559-570.
- Threlfall, C. G., Mata, L., Mackie, J. A., Hahs, A. K., Stork, N. E., Williams, N. S. G., & Livesley, S. J. (2017). Increasing biodiversity in urban green spaces through simple vegetation interventions. Journal of Applied Ecology, 54(6), 1874-1883.
- Pecl, G. T., Araújo, M. B., Bell, J. D., Blanchard, J., Bonebrake, T. C., Chen, I. C., … & Williams, S. E. (2017). Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science, 355(6332), eaai9214.
- Brooker, R. W., Maestre, F. T., Callaway, R. M., Lortie, C. L., Cavieres, L. A., … Michalet, R. (2008). Facilitation in plant communities: The past, the present, and the future. Journal of Ecology, 96(1), 18–34.
- Bertness, M. D., & Callaway, R. (1994). Positive interactions in communities. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 9(5), 191-193.
- Laliberté, E., Lambers, H., Burgess, T. I., & Wright, S. J. (2015). Phosphorus limitation, soil-borne pathogens and the coexistence of plant species in hyperdiverse forests and shrublands. New Phytologist, 206(2), 507-521.
- Götsch, E. (1995). Break-through in agriculture. AS-PTA.
- Bennett, J. A., Maherali, H., Reinhart, K. O., Lekberg, Y., Hart, M. M., & Klironomos, J. (2017). Plant-soil feedbacks and mycorrhizal type influence temperate forest population dynamics. Science, 355(6321), 181-184.
Erik van Zuilekom
UnitedNatures Design
E: unitednatures@yahoo.com.au