A Global Plant Discovery Platform

SilvaGrid is a global plant discovery platform designed to make the world's vascular plant diversity easier to explore.

Plant-search tools, nursery catalogues and gardening websites typically focus on familiar plants, commercial cultivars, local growing advice and availability, while botanical databases provide invaluable taxonomic, nomenclatural and distribution information, often for scientific reference and research.

SilvaGrid bridges these approaches by turning structured botanical data into a practical discovery tool. It makes a much broader cross-section of the world's plants easier to discover and helps bring new and underutilized species into consideration for cultivation, design, restoration and plant research.

How SilvaGrid Works

SilvaGrid brings together WCVP taxonomy and native-range data for more than 415,000 taxa. Users can currently explore this information by macroclimate, plant type and native range.

For example:

"Which climbing plants occur naturally in tropical climates?"
"What arid-climate trees are native to my region?"

SilvaGrid is intended to identify possibilities for further investigation rather than replace detailed local assessment. Climate tolerances, site conditions, availability, legal or invasive status and project-level specification should be checked separately where relevant.

Who SilvaGrid Is For

SilvaGrid is for anyone interested in exploring plants beyond familiar commercial and nursery lists. Typical uses include:

Gardening & Cultivation: Keen gardeners, plant collectors and horticulturists exploring unfamiliar plants, native ranges and broad climatic relationships.
Design & Planning: Landscape architects, designers, planners and public-realm teams exploring broader plant palettes during early-stage research and design.
Ecology, Restoration & Plant Research: Ecologists, restoration practitioners, botanists, environmental scientists, foresters and researchers investigating plant diversity, geography and candidate species.

These examples are not exhaustive. SilvaGrid is designed as an open discovery platform for anyone interested in exploring global plant diversity.

About the Creator

Ben Dungey

Landscape Architect & Developer

Ben Dungey is a landscape architect and developer with more than two decades of professional experience. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Botany and Zoology and postgraduate qualifications in Landscape Architecture. SilvaGrid brings together his longstanding interests in plants, landscape design and software development.

Open Access

SilvaGrid is currently free to use. Explore plants across the global dataset using macroclimate, plant type and native range.