Growth experience

Nursery Antique Perennials has always been about introducing exciting plants to Australian gardeners, says co-founder Michael Morant, and now has a vibrant display garden to showcase its wares.

- 

Antique Perennials has undergone many changes and challenges over the past 25 years. But the overriding ethos for both myself and my business partner Matt Reed has always been to collect and grow plants we love; to introduce more variety into the Australian market, and contribute to the slow but sure perennial wave as it continues to gain momentum. This was the germ of Antique Perennials and it is still at the core of everything we do.

You'll often find us shrouded in mountain fog digging and dividing stock plants or taking cuttings near the beehives that border the beautiful Kinglake National Park, with a backdrop of towering eucalyptus and the eclectic songs of lyrebirds mimicking our plentiful bird life. Acres of perennials, neatly placed, wait to escape their purple pots and populate gardens across Australia's states and territories.

Our story, and our collection, began with Matt. In the late 1990s, Matt and I worked together growing roses in the wholesale side of a large retail garden centre. He was my manager and had been in the industry since the late 1980s. I had been working nights in hospitality, but always enjoyed gardening.

Feeling underappreciated and bored of a monoculture, we could see a big gap in the market for perennials. In 2001, we decided to quit our jobs and try to fill that gap with interesting plants. Matt had already developed a decent collection of rare perennials, which was the foundation of our early propagation material.

Soon, we were planning plant-hunting trips to Europe and the USA, excitedly importing new plants through the Australian border system, hoping some would survive months of quarantine and the shock of an upside-down hemisphere. Many of the plants in our early collection were woodlanders, species of Erythronium, Fritillaria, Trillium, Arisaema and