EBENEZER green thumb Heather Knowles has perfected the art of patience as it pertains to nurturing and growing native plants.
She’s had a lifelong love of Australian plants and more recently her interest has been directed towards cycads.
“I’ve had my little backyard nursery for about 30 years and it’s really just a hobby,” she said of her passion for native cycads.
“There was a time when I was pumping out thousands of natives for revegetation but when I hit retirement age, I slowed it down a bit.
“Now I just do it in my spare time and don’t propagate as many plants as I used to, just mainly the cycads.
“I buy little tiny tube stock plants and grow them to sell at native plant sales.
“I grow cycads from seed, you need a lot of patience as they take a long time to germinate and grow to a saleable size.”
Heather uses eBay to find and buy the seedlings.
“It is easy to get seed or little seedlings of exotic plants off eBay, particularly the African species,” she explained.
“Native [Australian] species are horrendously difficult to get hold of.
“You need a permit to collect them and most of the seed collecting companies don’t bother because it’s too much work.”
Two years ago, she wrote to every seed collection enterprise she could find within Queensland and NSW asking about cycad seed.
“Only one replied to me saying basically ‘sorry but we don’t have a permit to collect’,” she said.
“There are people who just go dig them out of the ground in the wild, that’s illegal unless you get it on private property with the property owners’ permission.
“Some species are classified as endangered, that equates to about a third of the Australian species so it can be really difficult.”
It’s not all doom and gloom. The cycad lover has managed to make a few contacts with people who have mature plants and she buys seed from them on a regular basis.
“When I see any native cycads advertised on eBay I jump on it really quickly,” she said.
“You can pay as much at $10 a seed and then you need to wait three to 12 months for it to germinate and maybe another two years before they’re saleable.
“You need a lot of patience to grow the native ones.”
Heather is also treasurer of Native Plants Queensland Ipswich Branch.
“Native Plants Queensland is my main interest, I am a life member of the Ipswich branch and organise the annual plant sale,” she said.
“I co-ordinate the sales the group runs from the Rosewood Showground in October each year.
“This year will be my 11th show.
“We have about 15 growers selling native plants and they bring in around 4,500 plants.
“Last year we sold nearly 3,000 plants in five hours.”
Heather runs the annual native plant sale single handed.
“I have pretty much organised most of them by myself, a committee of one is a wonderful thing sometimes,” she said.
“Everything does go through a meeting though, we had a meeting recently where we went through a bunch of things for this year’s plant sale.”
