Your postcode and your climate zone
Your postcode is the single most important setting in Garden Buddy. It decides which weather feed we use, which climate zone we put you in, which planting windows show on the calendar, and which pests are likely to appear at your place this week. Set it once and everything else adapts.
Why postcode matters
Garden Buddy isn’t a generic garden app. Every piece of advice is tuned to the weather and climate at your place. We do that by looking up five things from your postcode the moment you save it:
- State — determines which BOM forecast feed covers you.
- Climate zone — picks the planting calendar and pest list.
- Forecast area — the BOM aac code closest to you, so the temperature and rain chance shown are for your town, not the capital.
- Local station override — if we’ve got a closer weather station mapped to your postcode (a Weather Underground PWS, or the Dayboro WeeWX feed), we use that instead of BOM.
- BOM warnings — severe-weather warnings that actually overlap your LGA, filtered from the state-wide fire hose.
Without a postcode we fall back to Dayboro. That’s fine if you are in Dayboro. It’s useless everywhere else.
How to set it
First-time users
- Log in and open /my-garden/.
- Scroll to the Postcode & zone card near the top.
- Type your 4-digit postcode.
- Click Save postcode.
Your climate zone, representative town and state update within a second or two. No page reload needed.
What gets written
Four values are stored against your user account:
gb_postcode— 4 digits (e.g.4521)gb_zone_code—subtropical,warm-temperate, etc.gb_zone_name— human-readable zone namegb_state—QLD,NSW,VIC, …
These values drive every subsequent weather and pest call.
The seven climate zones
Australia has seven working climate zones. Every postcode falls into exactly one. Your planting calendar, the pest list on /pests/, and the suggestions in your weekly digest all key off this one field.
| Zone | Typical postcodes | What you grow differently |
|---|---|---|
| Tropical | Darwin, Cairns, Townsville, Broome | Wet/dry seasons, heat-tolerant crops, no frost |
| Subtropical | Brisbane, Dayboro, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast | Year-round growing, short mild winter |
| Warm-temperate | Sydney, Newcastle, Coffs Harbour, Perth | Full four seasons, two main sowing windows |
| Cool-temperate | Canberra, Melbourne, Ballarat, Launceston | Long cool winter, real frost, shorter summer |
| Cold-highland | Southern Tas, Alpine NSW, ACT highlands | Frost most of the year, polytunnel-friendly |
| Mediterranean | Adelaide, Perth inland, coastal SA/WA | Wet winters, dry summers, mulch-heavy |
| Arid | Alice Springs, inland WA/SA/Qld | Drip irrigation, shade cloth, hardy varieties |
Pro tip: if your postcode straddles two zones (for example, coastal vs inland), we pick the zone with the largest geographical overlap. Your home postcode answer is the simple, correct one for you.
Where your weather comes from
When you open a page that shows current conditions (weekly digest, dashboard, pest alerts), we walk through three options in priority order:
| Priority | Source | When we use it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Local weather station (Weather Underground PWS or the Dayboro WeeWX) | If your postcode is manually mapped to a specific station and the station reported within the last 90 minutes |
| 2 | Dayboro WeeWX (Ecowitt GW2000 + WS90) | Only for postcode 4521 — within 30 minutes of the last archive row |
| 3 | BOM precis forecast for your area | Always available as a fallback, refreshed every 6 hours from the official BOM XML feed |
The current-conditions widget shows the source in small text at the bottom (e.g. “Dayboro WeeWX (Ecowitt GW2000 + WS90)” or “BOM precis (Brisbane)”). If you ever see a number that doesn’t match your garden, check that line first — it tells you exactly which station is reporting.
We’re adding more Weather Underground PWS mappings as users ask. If there’s a public station in your neighbourhood that we should map to your postcode, get in touch with the station ID (e.g. IBRISBAN109) and we’ll add it.
Moving house — changing your postcode
Gardeners move. Your postcode is a plain field on your profile — change it any time and everything adapts on the next page view:
- Go to /my-garden/.
- Edit the postcode field and save.
- Your climate zone, weather source and pest list all update immediately.
Existing garden beds, plants, harvests and care log are not touched — they stay exactly as they were. If you’re tracking a long-running perennial (e.g. citrus) planted at the old address and you want to preserve its history, leave it as-is; add new plants for the new location in a fresh bed.