A New Era For One of Australia’s Most Important Garden Centres
WORDS Pip Young | PHOTOGRAPHY @itsalletc
Kuranga Native Nursery is one of Melbourne’s most well-known native nurseries, and a garden centre that Yarra Magazine has proudly worked with since our humble beginnings. Now situated in Mount Evelyn, the nursery began its life in 1983 at the rear of a garden centre in Ringwood. Evan Clucas and Leanne Weston identified a gap in the market and created a new nursery, carrying a diverse range of rare and unusual varieties of native flora. From its inception, Kuranga was often referred to as a hidden secret by those in the know, but now word has spread, and hundreds of people visit Kuranga each day to experience and celebrate the enduring beauty of Australian natives.
In 2004 the current nursery site opened in Mount Evelyn. Ben Clark joined the team as an apprentice a couple of years later and never really left the fold. Even as he ran his own successful landscaping business, Kangaroo Paw Landscapes, Ben still worked at Kuranga one day a week, until 2021 when he fulfilled a life-long dream, and is now, along with his wife Alexa, the proud new co-owner of Kuranga.
To read the whole article, get your copy of #51 Spring 2022 here.
