The field of ecological restoration is underpinned, in large part, by appropriate monitoring efforts of restoration projects, to understand outcomes and guide future interventions. The gold-standard study design for this type of monitoring is the use of Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) designs, with multiple treatment and control sites. However, these projects require prior knowledge of interventions for the collection of before data and may be limited by the significant cost to collect appropriate long-term after data. Consequently, many studies employ Space-For-Time (SFT) methods to evaluate restorations, comparing restored sites of different ages and reference sites with unrestored sites to draw inferences about the effects of restoration practices through time. A 2018 study of stream restoration activities found only 6 in 55 articles that reported statistically significant results used a BACI design. Studies that compare the results of BACI and SFT methods to monitor the same phenomenon are rare. As part of a PhD research project, we used both BACI and SFT to assess the results of a riparian restoration project involving willow removal and riparian revegetation in south-eastern Australia, where willows are a highly invasive riparian pest species. Control sites in the BACI study were used as the unrestored sites in the SFT design, and data were collected contemporaneously from 2020-2023 using the same field methods. The BACI study was targeted at the short-term changes caused by the project, while the SFT project incorporated restored sites established 3-18 years prior to sampling. These studies investigated water quality, channel shape, stream flow, and aquatic macrophytes. Results between the two approaches varied, likely due to several factors including local variability and the length of time since a restoration project took place. This comparison supports combining SFT and BACI approaches to improve the temporal resolution of short-term BACI study designs.