The dancing swimmers at a family-run nursery. Photo: Kellie O’Brien.
Walking through an Illawarra nursery recently took me back to earlier days, spending Saturday afternoons hopping from one garden centre to the next.
You could lose hours inside their walls, and conquering every nursery in town felt like a genuine achievement.
The real thrill was how they were designed, forcing you to navigate through winding pathways as if making your way up Macquarie Pass.
They even came complete with a tight hairpin bend or two as you tried not to knock over an angry-looking gnome holding a pitchfork.
Those days seem to be fast disappearing.
While Bunnings obviously comes with some convenience benefits, its downside is a decline in nurseries that each offered a unique take on what your backyard garden could become.
In my case, it would never become what they were selling.
I’m an avid gardener, but not a particularly successful one, as seeds become thriving little seedlings but are somehow decimated as they’re dug into the ground.
But I could dream, and that’s what the corner nursery was selling me. The dream.
In the end, it’s probably more about the act of being outside, gaining some exercise, taking in nature, and getting a little dirt under my fingernails than building my own botanic garden.
Although, I tend to lean more towards veggies than flowers, preferring tangible benefits from my gardening efforts.
Which is quite ironic, since I produce about a handful of tomatoes, a cucumber or two and some lettuce each year. At least I can make a salad.
We’re fortunate in the Illawarra to still have a few independent nurseries we can access as backyard gardeners.
A horse garden feature that would fit in any art gallery. Photo: Kellie O’Brien.
Our job really is to ensure we help them continue to grow.
We still have the Shellharbour City Council Nursery at Oak Flats, Burnetts On Barney at Kiama, Leisure Coast Garden Centre at Fairy Meadow, The Niche Nursery at Thirroul, and Sunrise Nursery at Helensburgh, to name a few.
When you step into each of these centres, you feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. And hey, most of them have a coffee shop these days if you’re looking for the full garden afternoon tea experience.
The real joy though is in the variety, from ornaments that could easily find a place in the nearest Sculptures By the Sea event, to water features in shapes you never thought possible, and plants that you suddenly convinced yourself you needed.
While visiting a nursery late last year in Tasmania, large voluptuous swimmers in colourful bathing suits dancing around an oversized water feature became hard to miss.
So why are these garden centres declining?
Probably because the size of the blocks in the Illawarra have shrunk and no-one has the space for said dancing swimmers.
Maybe it’s also because the era of the family nursery has faded, taking with it generations of local knowledge about what actually grows best in this part of the world.
In turn, that ensures we’re successful and keep returning to our gardens.
But what the local nursery really offered was something slower. An afternoon meandering through possibilities instead of a quick duck into Bunnings.
Maybe that’s what we miss most.
They didn’t just sell plants. They sold imagination and the possibility that this season, your garden might finally work out.
So hold on to the garden centres we have. We need them.
