Country

Norfolk Island: one ecoregion. Each with its climate now and toward 2050, and its conservation tier.

Norfolk Island is its own ecoregion: the Norfolk Island subtropical forests, an Australasian tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest system of just 16 square miles, ranked Nature Could Recover. Few places map so exactly onto one ecological identity; the island's natural cover is subtropical forest shaped by an isolated, ocean-moderated climate without continental extremes. Gardening here follows that character: broadleaf evergreen trees and a moist-forest understory suit the sheltered ground, while everything near the coast needs tolerance for salt wind. On an island whose entire ecoregion totals 16 square miles, every planting decision is proportionally significant, and choosing the island's own subtropical-forest species over imports is the most direct contribution a garden can make to the recovery the ecoregion is judged capable of.