Community & Business
3 April, 2025
Bouquets for new boutique nursery
Adding a touch of creativity to a garden means the difference between enjoying a view and experiencing a view.
And a new nursery at Walkamin is hoping to open up the green-thumb imagination.
“Both of us are very passionate about it all being an art,” the Spotted Quoll Nursery business partners, Kath Salter and Alyson Johnston, said last week.
“Gardening is an art, because you’re making a beautiful space for people to enjoy.
“So it was important for us to have a lot of what we call ‘garden art’ - a lot of rustic water features, beautiful grass trees that are made of iron, and would look good in the garden. It’s an important part of what we do,” Kath explained.
The long-time friends both used to work together in landscaping and revegetation projects in Townsville.
Alyson then moved to the tablelands and worked at the old Killara nursery and loved it.
“Then things changed in my life, so I decided to come up here and have a look around,” Kath said.
“I’ve also wanted to have a retail nursery as well because I started there.
“So, we both realised we had the same vision and we should go in together.”
The nursery is situated in an agricultural shed on the Mt Uncle grazing property and is a “very dramatic site”.
As well as the garden art, the women have created a restful space filled with plants, where one can browse at leisure.
“It’s a place where you can have a bit of an experience rather than just going to buy a plant,” Kath said.
“You can meander. We don’t have any rows, and we don’t have everything in groups.”
Their plants range from natives, of the mostly drier variety, such as grevilleas, or glycines, edibles, indoor plants, roses, herbs and plenty of potted colour. The range goes from seedlings through to advanced trees.
The nursery only opened recently, and the women are doing a bit of a happy dance at the response.
“It’s been amazing. Everybody’s come in and said exactly what we wanted to hear which was that they’ve not seen anywhere like this for a long time, they’ve not seen all these plants before in a nursery up here, and they don’t know where to look,” Kath said.
“People came in and sat at the tables and chairs we have in here, just to look, and relax, enjoy the area and think about their gardens and what they want – we had one couple sit for quite a long time taking it all in.”
The popularity of the tables and chairs begs the question, café?
“We would love to look at that because our site lends itself to having a beautiful outdoor café out here, but for the moment, we just want to start to walk,” Kath said.
In the meantime, they do provide a free coffee and tea stand for those who want to spend time among the plants.
“That’s our point of difference. You can come along with a friend, relax, have a chat as you meander around.”
It also doesn’t hurt that the Mt Uncle Distillery is nearby. People could make a day of it, they agreed with a chuckle.
The Spotted Quoll Nursery is at 1914 Chewko Road, Walkamin (follow the big sign to the distillery off the highway and the nursery is on the left.)
