The City of Melbourne, through our Urban Forest Strategy, has a comprehensive plan for greening major streets and precincts, but not the smaller laneways. Across the municipality, laneways occupy a ground area of 60 hectares, with a further 150 hectares of space on the walls in these laneways.

The Green Your Laneway pilot project investigates the opportunity for lanes to be greened for the following reasons:

• providing shading and local cooling
• improved aesthetics and local amenity
• ecological benefits
• health and wellbeing flow on effects
• increasing landscape permeability (and hence flood mitigation and passive watering)
• creating opportunities for relaxation and recreation.

Melbourne’s laneways are internationally renowned for their street art and café culture. This culture could be further enhanced by making our laneways more green and sustainable places. Our laneways could also be playing a role in cooling the city, and helping intercept and clean our stormwater. From growing vertical gardens, to planting trees and creating pocket parks, our laneways have enormous potential to become our city’s backyards.

Earlier this year four laneways were selected (from 800 nominated) to be part of a pilot project to transform the lanes into leafy, green useable spaces for owners, residents, workers and visitors to enjoy. The laneways selected to be part of the pilot are:

• Meyers Place
• Coromandel Place
• Guildford Lane
• Katherine Place

We have been closely working with residents and businesses in each of the four laneways to develop a range of greening concepts. We are now inviting the broader public to share their views on the ideas.

From over 800 submissions, we shortlisted to ten lanes. These lanes were reviewed

against a comprehensive criteria which included:

• ‘good’ potential for greening is preferred (coloured green in the maps)
• high level of interest from the people who live, work and visit the laneway
• suitable ideas for greening the laneway
• applicants who can contribute to greening the lane (eg. assisting with maintenance)

From there, four lanes were selected to be part of the pilot. We have been closely working with residents and businesses in each of the four laneways to develop a range of greening concepts. We are now inviting the broader public to share their views on the ideas.

We have been closely working with residents and businesses in each of the four laneways to develop a range of greening concepts. The greening concepts have been designed specifically for each laneway and include:

• Meyers Place – vertical greening on the car-park, with trees and the possibility of a new pedestrian area. This will also be a location to test ‘green art’.
• Coromandel Place – vertical greening with enhancements to the existing planter boxes, as well as a possible tree and lots of new seating locations.
• Guildford Lane – plenty of ‘draingardens’ to catch stormwater and enable vertical greening; a communal garden, and a few new places to sit.
• Katherine Place – a miniature boulevard with a number of trees, leading towards an ivy-covered archway.

We are now inviting the broader public to share their views on the ideas. Following the community consultation process, the City of Melbourne will finalise the final laneway designs in early 2017, with implementation commencing towards winter 2017.

As part of the Green Your Laneways pilot project, Meyers Place will have changed traffic conditions from 2 November to 16 November.

Two new traffic arrangements will be tested in early November: full closure of a central section of the lane, and intermittent closure of the same segment. In the image below, the green highlight indicates the area that will be closed.

Full closure is proposed to be 24hr from the morning of November the 2nd to 1am on the 10th of November. Closure will then be intermittent (from 12pm-1am) from the 10th to the 16th. During this period Meyers Place will still be accessible for deliveries and waste collection, but vehicles will need to reverse into the lane as if it was a dead-end street.

If you own a private lane, you could undertake your own greening project, consistent with normal planning processes. If you’d like to green your street, take a look at our Street Garden Guidelines for further information. If you’re interested in community gardening, have a look at our Community Garden policy and guidelines. Please note that the majority of the city’s lanes are publically owned spaces and any greening must be completed by, or on behalf, of the City of Melbourne. No person may independently complete works without our prior permission.

When we consider any changes to traffic conditions, we carry out careful traffic studies to ensure all access, delivery and emergency management needs can continue to be met. This is a very thorough process and following the results of the traffic study, we will work with residents and business owners to discuss future plans.

Definitely. Even in laneways with limited light, it’s possible to get healthy plant growth with suitable species selection and good planting design. In a number of existing lanes, trees flourish on just a few hours of sunlight a day.