THE HOBBY THAT GOT OUT OF HAND - A flourishing Dalby business

Damian Cumming of Dalby used to have a radiator works business. But he always loved the bush. When his kids were young he used to spend as much time as possible in the bush with them.

He knew all the birds and all the plants – especially the plants. One thing led to another. He began to propagate bush plants for his own garden, set on 10 flat and empty acres on the edge of Dalby where he and his wife Janelle built a home in 1984.

Thus grew what is now a major Darling Downs business. Today Ausplant Nursery, a wholesale-only business owned by Damian and Janelle’s son Brady and his wife Rachele, supplies a broad range of Australian native and exotic plants throughout Queensland and New South Wales.

Ausplant is Queensland’s largest plant nursery west of the Divide; which corroborates with a total of hundreds of thousands of potted plants. There flourish in various stages of propagation and growth throughout the site including cuttings, tissue cultures and grafts carefully placed in tiny pots and set in trays in the controlled-atmosphere propagation house.

As the major plant supplier west of the Divide, the vicissitudes of the western climate are bred into the Ausplant product – with the exception of frost covers, which are essential. Once past the propagation stage they are raised in the open, watered abundantly from the purpose-built dam on the site.