Cottage Garden Plants Australia | Yellow House Nursery

Yellow House Heritage Perennials is a small cottage garden nursery in the NSW South Coast town of Nowra. While the majority of our sales are online we are also open by appointment.

Yellow House Heritage Perennials is a very personal nursery, chock full of the odd, the unusual, the hard to find plants for sun to shade.

I propagate all the plants I sell and they are all grown outdoors and have to cope with the weather, so they have to be fairly tough. I don’t continue with plants that fail to cope as there are so many beautiful ones which do.

While there are hundreds of different perennials in the nursery those I’m particularly interested in and collect are the Cranesbill Geraniums, Geums, Achilleas, Artemisias, Heleniums, Salvias, Penstemons, Perennial Phlox and Sanguisorbas.

I belong to the Hardy Plant Society (UK) and the Alpine Garden Society (UK) and through their yearly seed distribution have propagated many hard-to-find perennials.

Most of the plants we moved here adapted very well, which reinforces my belief that plants really do want to live and will do their best to adapt to different soil and climatic conditions.

You may find plants you have purchased from us or are familiar with grow quite differently in your area. Sometimes I have read of one which reaches 2m, when for me it has never exceeded 50cm, while the reverse is also true. Gardening is certainly full of surprises.

How we started

Like many of us with small nurseries my story began when I started a new garden. When we moved to Nowra I was excited to build a garden in this new place, but first we had to remove 73 ton of concrete and a jungle of rampaging creepers.

After two years of hard work the garden was thriving and we opened our garden for the Australian Open Garden scheme. In my enthusiasm I potted up some of the perennials from the garden for sale when the garden was open. From this small beginning Yellow House Heritage Perennials quickly grew.

Now many years later a lot of lessons learnt, knowledge acquired and hard work the nursery is set on its course to conserve, propagate and distribute a wide range of perennials.

While often the hours I work are ridiculous, it’s a good life, I find plants ever fascinating from the first flower to the first tiny seedling emerging or a difficult to propagate cutting finally developing roots.

Our nursery

Yellow House Heritage Perennials is open by appointment most of the year. Our climate is coastal (15 km from the sea), frost free and our coldest winter temperature is about 5⁰, with summer temperatures occasionally in the 40s.

What our customers say

“Thank you so much, the plants are very healthy and happy.”
“I was over the moon with the healthy plants – thank you!”
“All plants arrived in great condition, the packaging on the plants is great – love the straw.”
“The plants arrived and look great. Thank you for packing them so carefully.”
"Thank you once again for such healthy good size plants, I am so happy with all the plants I have bought from Yellow House."

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