Environmental watering in wetlands is an important management tool for restoring wetland vegetation, with the outcomes typically evaluated through long-term monitoring. A key step in planning wetland vegetation monitoring is the timing of surveys. In temporary wetlands, many wetland plant species persist during dry phases as a below-ground propagule bank, with their germination, growth and die-off triggered by inundation and post-inundation conditions such as moist and drying soil. This can result in the wetland plant community changing rapidly during and after inundation, whether natural or artificially regulated through the delivery of environmental water. However, a knowledge gap is how quickly these changes in the plant community occur, and whether the rate of these changes is predictable between inundation events. The aim of this project is to quantify the degree that wetland plant community composition changes over time in response to individual inundation events to inform the timing of monitoring surveys. We used a long-term wetland monitoring dataset collected in the Goulburn-Broken region of central Victoria to examine how different wetland plant functional groups changed following three different environmental water delivery events across five wetlands, with between three and seven surveys conducted within a six-month period after inundation. We found that wetland plant cover and richness generally increased between each survey in the six months following inundation. This means that surveys too soon after inundation may occur before wetland plants reach a peak in richness and cover. However, the rate of the change varied with location within wetlands, particularly in relation to flood duration and depth. We discuss these findings in relation to the timing of monitoring surveys and how wetland managers and researchers can design vegetation monitoring that best supports the evaluation of wetland vegetation objectives and targets.