Woiwurrung
The Woiwurrung have been the traditional owners and custodians of much of what is now Melbourne for thousands of years, living off the land surrounding the Yarra and Maribyrnong River Basins.
As the Indigenous people of this land, having knowledge of the plants found here is essential to the Woiwurrung's way of life. Knowledge of where each plant can be found, which are edible and which can be made into tools all would have been vital to everyday life. It is part of what makes their connection to country so strong.
As Melbournians, it is our duty to be educated on the flora of our city and surrounds; to honour the custodians of the land by planting native plants in our green spaces and learn why each is so important.
This website shows some of these plants and their importance to the Woiwurrung, as well as green spaces where you can go to enjoy our indigenous flora.
Bundjil (the Wedge Tailed Eagle) and Waang (the Crow): the two moieties of the Woiwurrung as well as other Kulin mobs
JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
About the Project
The Native Garden Project is a student-run site offering information on natural spaces and flora native to the Melbourne metropolitan area, particularly within the boundaries of the Wurundjeri-woiwurrung people. In initiating this project, we wanted to explore how the Melbourne community incorporates Indigenous knowledge of flora into green spaces.
We believe this is vital to decolonising our city, utilising only native flora to our area and highlighting oftentimes forgotten knowledge of these plants by the Wurundjeri-woiwurrung. In this way we hope to approximate and pay respect to the vegetation of Melbourne pre-colonialism.
In this website, we outline species of plants native to the Melbourne area, including traditional names and uses for them, as well as green spaces featuring native plants. The green spaces highlighted here are by no means complete and representative of all the spaces of Melbourne. Instead, we hope that they inspire others in their own green spaces, show where certain plants can be observed and how they affected the researchers of this project.
We would also like to acknowledge that we are not Indigenous and are not speaking on behalf of Indigenous peoples. Due to the low level nature of this project, we have not chosen to involve Wurundjeri community members or the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation in this project directly, on advice not to detract from their already stretched resources. However, we openly invite any Wurundjeri or Indigenous Australians more broadly to critique or provide input to this site.