Native king

Andrew Mathieson
CURLEWIS is 3419 kilometres away from Kings Park, Perth’s floral wonderland where wildflowers and natives bloom with very little encouragement.
Such West Australian plants prosper best in their deep sand plains, not found among the Bellarine clay soils.
So turning a few horse stables on a four-acre open block to replicate bushland on the other side of the country speaks wonders for green thumb Phillip Vaughan’s talents.
“It was just a paddock, with lots of wide fences and piles of horse poo,” he recalls, “so we’ve cleaned the gardens up, as you can see.”
The landscape, much like most of Australia’s eastern seaboard, was flat, poorly drained and lined with windswept pines.
But a first visit to Perth more than two decades ago convinced Phillip to replicate their gardens in his own backyard.
“If you have never been to the west, you are never going to know how good that stuff is until you see it first hand,” he excitedly boasts.
“We brought a lot of this stuff back because we couldn’t buy it and I thought I’ll have to grow it myself.
“I found that most of it was too hard to grow and I went down this grafting phase.”
Grafting a plant onto a compatible root takes the soil, more or less, out of the equation.
So good is he that Phillip is teaching the West Australians a thing or two now, selling batches of the native plants back to Kings Park.
“We basically take those WA plants and put it on herbs that are easily to grow over here,” Phillip explains.
Grafting was virtually unheard of when Phillip cut and carved his way through the first stem.
“It was trial and error at first,” he insists.
Vaughan’s Australian Plants has grown into a maze of every plant imaginable.
The nursery has more than 5000 natives on offer.
“I could probably still find someone a plant with my eyes close,” he says.
“They could name it and I could point where they are.”
Sitting in his office shed, ready to munch down a salad roll, a customer inquiry stumps the gardening guru.
Without a hesitation, he turns to daughter Katherine and says, “Ring Don Burke and get his opinion on it”.
Liaising with the face of Australian gardens is part of the routine on most busy days.
“He’s a good friend now,” Phillip admits.
They met at a Sydney plant sale and since, Burke has filmed at Phillip’s nurseries.
When Phillip found resistance from nearby residents when establishing the Curlewis nursery in 2003, it was Burke who wrote a testimonial letter to council.
It now takes pride of place behind a sealed layer of laminate, pointing out that Phillip is Australia’s foremost native plant gardener.
“That’s something I am pretty proud of,” Phillip adds.