Visioning, implementing plans and actions, and realising outcomes for green infrastructure can be achieved by community volunteers applying their passion and expertise.  A key to unlocking authentic community governance lies, in part, with the other stakeholders for the place and project (like government and business) being prepared to enable, empower and partner equally with community. This is fundamentally a different governance approach to political and corporate governance models that dominate the neo-liberal environment. Two successful case studies show community governance models that started with a community led vision for complex green infrastructure projects and have resulted in impressive social, environmental, economic and governance outcomes over several decades. Less successful examples in this research gave indications of what can go wrong when governance paradigms are not fit for purpose. The case study examples of Merri Creek and Bibbulmun Track show positive lessons for sustainability and resilience success after surviving and thriving through change, challenge and crisis. Simultaneously they demonstrated increasing social capital and trust, growing partnerships and networks, strong collaborative leadership, adaptability and innovation.  Across key strategic areas, both projects sought excellence, building knowledge, expertise and growing reputational capability. This emphasis on reputation is driven by resource necessity for a highly dynamic purpose-oriented collaborative organisation seeking longevity in an environmental planning context dominated by state government.