Housing supply meets green design

Landscaping Victoria is advocating for the inclusion of landscaping on the government policy agenda.

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Australia needs more houses, but it needs them as part of greener, healthier communities built through collaboration across the design, construction, and landscape industries.

Australia is facing a generational challenge that demands more than lofty targets. With a federal goal to deliver 1.2 million new homes by mid-2029, the way we design, plan, and build must change. Success will depend on more than concrete and steel: it requires integrated thinking across architecture, construction, landscape design, and policy.

Silos are stalling progress

Australia's federated system has created a patchwork of rules, standards, and approvals. Each state and territory operates differently, creating duplication, confusion, and delay. Architects focus on buildings, planners on zoning, and builders on delivery, but too often, landscape professionals are brought in last, when the opportunity to shape climate-ready, liveable outcomes has already passed.

This fragmentation adds friction at a time when the need for collaboration has never been greater.

Housing targets without holistic design

The push for more homes risks being reduced to numbers alone. But if housing supply is expanded without integrating green space, urban cooling, and social infrastructure, we will deliver dwellings without delivering communities.

Mike Zorbas, CEO of the Property Council, warned productivity and innovation must go together.

In practice, that means embedding landscapers, designers, and ecologists alongside architects and builders from the outset.

Greening the nation: more than aesthetic

Landscape design and construction is not just 'the finishing touch'.