Indigenous micro-nursery · Naarm / Melbourne

Plants of place.

Indigenous plants, grown from local seed and matched to the Country they belong to.

The nursery is being established at the Gardener & Son studios. The first plants will be ready soon.

Themeda triandra · Kangaroo Grass✦ Bursaria spinosa · Sweet Bursaria✦ EVC 175 · Grassy Woodland✦ Microlaena stipoides · Weeping Grass✦ Dianella revoluta · Black-anther Flax-lily✦ EVC 934 · Brackish Grassland✦ Poa labillardierei · Common Tussock-grass✦ Themeda triandra · Kangaroo Grass✦ Bursaria spinosa · Sweet Bursaria✦ EVC 175 · Grassy Woodland✦ Microlaena stipoides · Weeping Grass✦ Dianella revoluta · Black-anther Flax-lily✦ EVC 934 · Brackish Grassland✦ Poa labillardierei · Common Tussock-grass✦

Why provenance matters

A plant of place carries the genetics of its locality — the drought it has learned, the soil that shaped it, the seasons it keeps.

That memory is the difference between a garden that survives and one that belongs. It cannot be bought off the back of a wholesale truck, and it cannot be hurried. So we grow it ourselves — close to home, in small numbers, from seed collected within reach of where the plants are going back into the ground.

What we mean by "of place"
Local provenance — seed and cuttings gathered within defined indigenous provenance zones, rather than the nearest commercial stock.

Why it holds
Plants raised from local genetics establish faster, ask for less water, and keep the local food web intact.

From seed to garden

Three steps, in order — because order is the whole point.

01 Provenance

Seed of place

Seed and cutting material is collected within local provenance zones, so each plant is genetically of here — not merely of its species.

02 Propagation

Grown on, slowly

Small batches raised by hand at the studio. We grow what the gardens need, when they need it, rather than what fills a wholesale order.

03 Placement

Matched to Country

Every plant is matched to its Ecological Vegetation Class, so it returns to a garden that resembles the living system it evolved inside.

One layer of a larger system

Plants of Place is the nursery inside Gardener & Son.

The gardens we design need plants we can stand behind. So the nursery sits alongside the rest of the practice — the design studio, the objects we keep, the ecological record we maintain. Each part feeds the next.

StudioGardens

You are herePlantsPlants of Place

ImprintObjects

RecordRegistry

Field notesStories

The nursery is taking root

Be told when the first plants are ready.

Leave an email and we'll be in touch as Plants of Place opens — first for Gardener & Son garden clients, then more widely.

We'll only write about the nursery. No lists, no noise.

✦ You're on the list.

Thank you. We'll let you know the moment the first plants are ready to leave the studio.

Acknowledgement of Country

Gardener & Son works on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We acknowledge them as the first and continuing custodians of this Country, and the deep knowledge of plants and place that has tended it for tens of thousands of years.

Plants of Place exists in conversation with that knowledge, never in place of it.

Sovereignty was never ceded.