First published 28 Oct 2026, 7:00am
When it comes to buying an apartment off the plan, there’s a common worry that many Australians have: will the promises live up to reality?
It’s hard to make one of life’s biggest choices based on blueprints alone, and it’s natural that many buyers feel they need to see an apartment development through artist renders to decide if it’s right for them.
And while these pictures are helpful for visualising a future home’s spaces, one area where they are notoriously hard to trust is their depiction of green space and gardens.
International examples, like this apartment complex in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, provide a model for how greenery can be integrated into urban design. Image: Getty
Developers may argue it’s hard to account for a plant’s growth, but it’s also an area that’s prone to embellishment.
And it's also a feature that materially impacts the usefulness of the apartment complex – its comfort, its amenity, and its contribution to the community.
In fact, buyers care a lot about the greenery surrounding their home. According to realestate.com.au’s 2026 New Homes research – which surveyed buyers considering a brand-new build – access to nature for apartment buyers was ranked as the fourth most desirable feature in a new home, behind only proximity to grocery stores , parking, and public transport.
Yet, in Australia, provisions to include nature in new urban apartment buildings are largely absent.
“Some of the well-used sustainability assessment tools, like the Green Star tool, for example, focus only on elements of climate, carbon emission, and so on. There isn't a mandatory requirement for nature or living landscape in the building rating system,” explained Janis Fischer, director and landscape architect at Tract.
Ms Fischer is on the board of a growing Australian nonprofit called Nature Based Cities, founded in 2022 by Paul Hameister, the executive chairman of Melbourne-based developer Hamton. A big advocate for adding “living landscape” as a requirement in Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) rating tools, Mr Hameister founded the organisation with a mission to bring greenery back into the centre of Australia’s major cities – and put this nature on the radar of more of the nation’s developers.
In service of this goal, the group has debuted two major tools over the past 18 months that are available to developers all across the country to help them answer a simple question both internally and for buyers: how green is this development, literally?
As Australian cities become denser, Nature Based Cities argues it's important for greenery to be considered at the outset of new residential housing projects.
As opposed to the current widely-used measures for ecological impact in Australia, the Nature Based Cities scorecards focus on how a development includes “nature and biodiversity,” with developers answering a range of questions about their development plans before it even kicks off.
These include whether they will retain existing trees, what level of canopy cover will be provided on the site, what percentage of indigenous plants will be included in landscaping, if vertical and horizontal greenery is planned, whether an ecologist will consult on the project, and more.
Having launched the first scorecard that can be applied to individual projects such as apartment buildings and townhomes last year, Nature Based Cities followed up with one that’s more applicable to larger-scale developments that might include multiple high-rises, public spaces, streetscapes and so on.
Across both, the message is clear: no matter the project, there is a gold standard for the inclusion of nature within new Australian development. It’s just a question of how committed developers are to this feature.
At Scotch Hill Gardens in Melbourne's Hawthorn neighbourhood, artist renders are backed by the development's exemplary rating on the Nature Based Cities scorecard. Image: realestate.com.au
According to Ms Fischer, part of the reason that Australia struggles to build nature-rich developments is a simple matter of process.
“Often a landscape architect doesn’t get appointed straight away, so by the time they come on, it might be too late to build these opportunities into their development,” she explained.
Alongside advisory council members from fields like property consultancy and sustainable design, Ms Fischer and the council sought first to develop a guide for best practices for developers who wanted to improve the standard of nature in their developments, but needed guidance.
The scorecard evolved out of that list of best practices, and the team is now focused on increasing its visibility and use among developers, as well as exploring its potential growth as a consumer tool.
So far, Hamton has committed to achieving exemplary standards for all their future developments, and current projects Scotch Hill Gardens and The Eveline have gone through independent review and been accredited with exemplary ratings.
In addition, developer Aria received a commended accreditation for their luxury Brisbane apartment tower, Cliff, while Spyre Group’s Watts & Wright boutique offering, also in Brisbane, received an exemplary mark.
Ms Fischer says that more projects are currently in the process of undergoing rating, and that governments and industry advocates have been warming to the scorecards.
“The Urban Development Institute of Australia, who are responsible for the EnviroDevelopment Program, have adopted it as part of their excellence program," she noted.
“We’ve also had some early discussions with local and state governments, who were quite interested in it as a potential part of the planning approvals process,” she added.
The biggest frontier is certainly making consumers aware of the rating system, but in time, with greater use, that visibility could grow.
Ms Fischer envisions a future where asking for the Nature Based Cities scorecard rating could be “just like buying a washing machine, where you look for the star rating”.
It's easy to see how, with greater use, Nature Based Cities scorecards could bring an added layer to the off-the-plan buying experience. “It’s important for consumers to know what the nature credentials are for the project that they’re buying into," she said, adding that there's more to understanding how green an apartment will be than "just looking at the renders".
Are you interested in learning more about Australia's newest homes? Check out our dedicated section .
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