This dataset contains data and codes from three field experiments described in the paper: “Hao Huang, Chi Xu and Quan-Xing Liu. (2021) ‘Social distancing’ between plants may amplify coastal restoration at early stage, Journal of Applied Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.14044”. The experiment investigates the effects of a factorial combination of three factors: above-ground spatial configurea and below-ground connectivity with low- and high-elevation environmental stress. We test the two species (Scirpus and Spartina) on performance such as...