The trees we see today in Sydney tell the stories of the people of this area and in particular the great plant collectors, botanists, nurserymen, horticulturists, landscape designers and garden makers of the nineteenth century. They also reflect the mass transplanting of palms and other species and the trend towards native tree plantings in the city in the twentieth century.

It is a very different landscape to that experienced by the coastal Eora people, the Aboriginal clan that inhabited the area around Sydney Harbour for an estimated 20,000 years before European settlement.

Follow our timeline to find out how the dramatic changes to our City treescape happened.

• Eighteenth century: Indigenous landscapes and European settlement

• Nineteenth century: food and romantic gardens

• Twentieth century: return to native plants

• Twenty-first century: challenges ahead