Pa’s Shed – Celebrating 90 years of Growth.
In 2004 we celebrated our 90th year in business with a Display Garden at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.

 

 
 Designer Jim Fogarty wrote this:

The idea for this years show garden is to celebrate the 90th year of Warners Nurseries. With Warners being stalwarts and supporters of MIFGS over the years, Semken Landscaping and myself have decided to pay respect to a company who has supplied quality plants to the industry over many generations.

The title ‘Pa’s Shed’ pays homage to the founder of Warners Nurseries, William Richard Warner. His family descendants still run the nursery today.

The garden is set in the late 1940’s, as the world emerges from the shadow of war. Soldiers return to home and family, the garden is a peaceful haven, the backyard shed a special refuge. Rather than old rusty corrugated iron, everything is still in pretty good condition and looking fresh. This is the world we recreate in “Pa’s Shed”.
We aim to replicate a small working garden with some vegetable furrows, as well as drawing on Warner’s extensive range to blend the favourite plants of yesteryear with today’s best and most fashionable selection.  The garden will include as its nucleus, a potting shed which will demonstrate the central story of the garden and how the Warners name has grown over the last 90 years.
Here, many of Warners historic relics and tools  will appear to have been laid aside just minutes earlier.

Dry stacked stone walling will provides the front and right hand aspects to the garden. The stone will be Colac rock and will be sourced from paddocks and returned where they were hand selected. There are many facets of this garden that would be deemed fashionable today.

A vista will lead the eye through the right hand side of the garden, through a timber arbour to a gate and curious pathway at the back of the site. All timber will be treated using creosote, a style of treatment common to that era.

Another vista runs across the garden from the right hand side to the left. Pavers of natural bluestone inter dispersed with impregnated pebbles, demonstrates how the style of garden construction of that period was heavily influenced by our English heritage.

To the left of the site will be a replica gravel drive, complete with potholes, and a garage in which will be housed an authentic 1936 Chevrolet Ute.

Water features will be subtle. One will involve running water under the cattle grid at the front of the driveway, demonstrating water runoff from irrigation in surrounding areas running back to the water source, in this case the lake behind. A replica tap and hose from the period will serve as the second water feature. All nursery watering at the time was done by hand and hose and this will reticulate on the pavers, running into an underground sump where it will be pumped back through the tap. This will also help educate how efficient the nursery industry has become in modern times with water conservation.

All plants will be Warners stock and will include mainly foliage plants suitable to dappled light conditions as well as a small amount of full sun varieties.

The garden does not intend to break any new ground with design ideas. Instead it aims to replicate a piece of history and tell a story from the early days of a business that is celebrating 90 years as one of the most respected names in the Australian greenlife industry.

Warner’s Nurseries today is a far cry from the days of Pa’s Shed, yet the old fashioned values of hard work, excellent service and top quality plants have not changed.