Retailing Tropical Plants in Queensland

A Family History

Abstract

I am connected to a family nursery business that has been running for four generations. My links go back to the early 1890s when my great grandfather had a nursery at Upper Mt Gravatt. He then shifted to South Brisbane where he moved into floristry. The business, however, was destroyed in the flood of 1893. His daughter, my grandmother, married Tom Perrott who had started in a nursery business with a well known nurseryman in Brisbane called T. H. Woods. They established the shop in George Street. They were also in the florist business and, in 1919, they decided to buy a nursery at Herston, near Ballymore Park and the Royal Brisbane Hospital, which ran until 1963. In the meantime, they had bought another nursery at Enoggera in 1936 (which I now own), and ran the two nurseries simultaneously. At that time, the main part of the business was still floristry and they did quite well in the depression years. The nursery at Enoggera was a 20 acre dairy farm that had been purchased mainly for the purpose of growing flowers for the floral trade. We used to grow rows and rows of different annuals and creepers and anything we could plant to flower, including many camellias which are still there today. A team of women would arrive at 6 o'clock every morning to pick these flowers and prepare them for packaging and transporting to the floral room at Herston.