NURTURE TRAIL

Memories of her childhood on a farm in Roma, Queensland, inspired Robin Mclay (below with Staffordshire bull terrier, Bungee) to create a big country garden at her home in Brookfield to Brisbane’s west. Robin’s rambling onehectare garden features sweeping lawns, a rose garden, a massive vegetable patch and a tropical walk. Plants have always been an abiding passion for Robin, even as a teenager at boarding school. “I’d rescue plants and grow them in water in the dormitory,” she says. Marrying a farmer meant moving further west to a sheep property at Tambo. Robin had their cottage fenced off from the paddocks and, after giving birth to her first daughter, she propagated cuttings of the chrysanthemum flowers she’d been given in the hospital, planting them all around the home. “There’s a photo of me the next year, nursing the baby surrounded by chrysanthemums,” she says. Nowadays, she owns Brookfield Garden Centre, just down the road from her house. As well as a nod to her country upbringing, Robin’s home garden is a place of experimentation and hospitalisation. “If I think a plant at the nursery looks a bit sad, I’ll bring it home to revive it,” she says. It seems Robin’s plant passion knows no bounds. (07) 3878 7739; brookfieldgardencentre.com.au