History of Paten Park Native Nursery
As Paten Park Native Nursery approaches its 10th anniversary in 2025, this Potted History written by Philip Arthur, a PPNN volunteer and former secretary, provides an insight into how the nursery came to be.
His booklet, “How We have Grown: A Potted History of Paten Park Native Nursery”, reveals how the thriving community that PPNN is today almost didn’t happen. But thanks to the efforts of many and a groundswell of community support from volunteers, dedicated staff, politicians and conservation organisations including Men of the Trees and Save Our Waterways Now, PPNN started in January 2015 on the site of a nursery previously run by Greening Australia and was officially established on March 18, 2015.
As Paul Ryan, now PPNN manager, told Quest newspapers in 2014, “I like to think that the nursery has as much to do with growing community as it does with growing plants.”
And that community is thriving, despite an initial battle for survival after Greening Australia (GA) closed its nursery on the site of what is now PPNN.
A “give it a go” attitude by staff and volunteers prevailed that has seen PPNN become a sustainable business in its own right and a highly regarded source of native plants for the public, councils, schools and private businesses.
The documented story really starts before European settlement when indigenous people first tended the land and became effectively the first horticulturists in the area. Enter the Europeans and in particular John Petrie, one of Brisbane’s first settlers, who grew up with some of the local indigenous people and learned their ways including how they cultivated some of the plants in the area.
Then among the first European settlers, the Paten Family settled in what is now The Gap in the 1850s and became successful farmers here. After a couple of generations one of the family members, Eunice Paten, was a decorated nursing sister and matron who not only volunteered on the frontline of the First World War in Belgium but also played an important role in setting up nursing in Queensland in the first half of the 20th Century. Paten Park, where the nursery is located is named after Eunice, a tribute to her services to nursing in Queensland. Eunice’s nephew Dick Paten, now in his 90s, has provided a lot of the early history of the area.
Later another pioneering woman, Ngairetta Brennan, started Men of the Trees (MOTT) in this area as the first group of propagators of native plants in Brisbane. Barbara Tealby and Marion Goward, who recently attended an early 10th anniversary celebration for PPNN, were both with MOTT in its early years. After propagating plants for years in their own backyards they were given access to what was at the time a run-down cottage in Paten Park in 1991. It was cleaned up and renovated into the cottage we know today by local volunteers and the first nursery in Paten Park became operational.
In 1997 the propagation work became too much for MOTT who wanted to focus on planting rather than propagating and they passed over management of the nursery to Greening Australia, which ran the nursery and supplied plants to MOTT and many other groups, as well as the public, for 17 years, with Paul eventually becoming their on-site manager. A number of volunteers from the community joined to help GA develop and grow the business.
This continued until late 2014 when GA decided to change its direction and close down the nursery at short notice. Luckily as Save Our Waterways Now (SOWN) had been established in the 1990s and had set up their own nursery adjacent to the GA nursery, they were able to band together with the employees and volunteers to lobby for the nursery to remain as a going concern.
There was quite a battle for survival in the early months of 2015 as Paul and many of the long-term volunteers, MOTT and SOWN argued the case to keep the nursery going after Greening Australia pulled out. There was resistance from the Brisbane City Council as certain people wanted the site to be used for a men’s shed. With the help of Kate Jones who was the State Member for the area at the time, the Council was persuaded to let Paul and the volunteers “give it a go”. And PPNN was born. The rest as they say is history.
As Philip says, “It was a struggle for the first couple of years but now I think we can say that PPNN is in a good place. I think we all know what a great place it is to be and what a great group of individuals have helped to grow it from its very humble beginnings.
“So, I hope you enjoy reading the potted history. I have really enjoyed being part of PPNN for the past 4 years and have enjoyed putting the booklet together and I hope it gives more people an idea of how PPNN came into being. It didn’t just appear out of nowhere to become the great place it is today but was the end result of huge efforts by a large number of people.”
Download How We Have Grown: A Potted History of Paten Park Native Nursery here.