Wild about seed
Danny Bruyn, September 2007 ‘Australian Country Style ’
A couple in WA’s Great Southern Region have created a home-based business to spread everlastings, the famous spring wildflowers, though the land.
Some of the most impressive displays of the famous West Australian wildflower season are the gorgeous pink and white everlastings that blanket part of the states mid-west in September and October.
In a good year the everlastings – so called because in days gone by they were frequently dried and turned into long-lasting decorations – can be so thick that visitors find it difficult to believe that the flowers haven’t been sown by man. Their profusion so natural – but if you happen to pass by the property of Rob and Jen Warburton, near Kojonup in the Great Southern Region, you’ll see what happens when wildflowers are farmed.
Four years ago, the Warburtons came up with the idea of growing everlastings to sell seed to wholesalers who supplied regeneration projects. They sowed a spare paddock corner by hand. The flowers did so well that the business of Lucinda’s Everlastings, named after the couples our-year-old daughter, was born.
Rob has since been able to adapt the farm’s harvesting and seeding equipment so he can use it for the flowers and they can now sow about three hectares. Last year hey expanded the business, creating a home-based retail operation so that the city gardeners can also enjoy these gorgeous native flowers.
“Everlastings can grow anywhere but they love it here,” Rob says. “They like the soil and the climate, so we can reliably produce the seed every year and it’s a nice fit with our other faming operations.”
The rolling hills of Kojonup, 300 kilometres south-east of Perth, are some of the most reliable cropping and grazing country in Western Australia, with an average annual rainfall of around 550mm. Rob’s father took on the bush block in 1968 – it was some of the last pastoral land to be cleared in the state – and by 1979 he had carved out a property of 2200 hectares. Initially the main focus was on sheep and wool but cropping of wheat, canola and barley now makes up around half of the business.
“I like that we can do the whole business from here,” Jen says. “At the moment the packaging looks like we’ve done it in the kitchen – which we have.
“I started off by going into the local supermarket and buying packets of zip-lock bags, simply because we wanted people to be able to see the seed. I think we started the whole thing because we were so amazed by the look of the seed.
“I’d weigh it into bags and put on a label made on the computer printer. Those first packs certainly didn’t look very flash, but they all sold – so we’ve moved on a little way from there.”
Indeed the packaging will soon lose the kitchen flavour. “Perth is only a few hours away so we’ve been able to organise professional help with the design of the boxes and the website with just one trip,” Jen says. But modern communications mean they can still run the whole enterprise from a remote location – “Between the phone and the internet we’ve been able to do almost everything from home.”
Rob also enjoys having discovered a farming enterprise that’s theirs to control.
“I enjoy the fact that we have to deal with the end user as opposed to just being a bulk producer, handling our produce on to someone else who sells it,” he says. “As wheat farmers we produce the grain, but we don’t produce the bread. But with this business, we’re involved in everything – the marketing, the manufacturing, making the boxes, the whole process.”
He hints that they’re thinking beyond everlastings, and may branch out into other wildflower projects – “I think we can do so much in the wildflower industry, we’ll just keep at it and see where it goes.”
Jen has a part-time job as a district water-watch coordinator and says the pretty everlastings are an ideal plant for home and civic gardens facing reduced water allowances.
“They require almost no maintenance and once they’ve been sown, they’ll self seed for the following year,” she says. “They’re just terrific, really.” ACS
Back to topMy Block
Lara Ladyman, July 2007 ‘Countryman’
A gap in the market seeded a young family's ambition.
In the springtime, near Kojonup, a carpet of pink stands out from the usual rural landscape chequered with golden hues of canala and green pastures and crops. Jen and Rob Warburton, who run a sheep and cropping enterprise south of Kojonup, first grew the pink and white everlasting flowers in 2000 after they were given a kilogram of seed to try.
The paper flowers sown in a spare corner of a paddock did well, despite being adapted to drier climates that the 550mm that Kojonup usually receives a year. “This is one of those years – perfect growing conditions for the flowers – very little rain,” Jen said.
They sowed the first lot of seeds by hand, mixing them with sand and spreading them on the ground surface. But the next year the crop failed, overrun by weeds.
They learnt that selecting a weed-free site and controlling the weeds before seeding was very important for being able to supply clean seed, because there were no chemicals that could be used to control weeds once the everlasting plants were growing.
“You have to have no weeds at all, especially dock and capeweed, as it is very hard to grade out from the everlastings seeds once harvested,” she said. “We soon stopped hand-seeding because it is too physically demanding and very uneven.”
While the everlastings are only grown on 2ha of the Warburton’s property, they are treated like the other commercial crops in that fertiliser is applied and weeds are controlled before seeding with a knockdown herbicide.
The everlastings are then sown in July with an old combine. They can be sown up to mid-August.
The seed is dropped on the surface with no tillage or disturbance of the soil, because tillage stirs up the weeds. When Rob is spraying the crops around the perimeter of the everlastings he quickly ducks in and sprays the everlastings with Flexi-N, a liquid nitrogen fertiliser, at the same time.
The crop is harvested using a modified conventional header. Jen said that getting the timing right for harvesting the flower heads was critical.
“One day they are almost too green to harvest and the next day they have shed onto the ground.” Deciding when to harvest is one of the most difficult decisions.
“There has to be some sacrifice of seed shed on to the ground, because the flowers are ready at different times, but the aim is to get the majority of seed. The sacrificed seed can then be seed that germinates the following year.”
“Sometimes we go a few years without changing sites but we will seed then in a new site if the previous year’s site has been engulfed by weeds.”
Initially, Rob and Jen started supplying the everlasting seeds to wholesale seed companies for mine site regeneration projects, but the business has rapidly expanded, with the seed now being supplied to nurseries and tourist information centres so city gardeners and small landholders can also ‘enjoy these gorgeous and easy-to-grow and water-wise native flowers.’
Jen said one of the reasons they went into the business was that there seemed to be a gap in the market.
“I couldn’t find any seed to plant in more that a pot plant.” Aside from having to learn how to grow the seed on a commercial scale, the Warburton’s have also had to develop, with the help of marketing experts Dic Design, their own labelling and packaging and distribution networks.
“I like the fact that we can do the whole business from the farm. Between the phone and the internet we’ve been able to do everything from home,” Jen said. The seed comes in packets of 10g, 20g and 50g, with a 10g packet containing enough seeds to provide a 10sqm carpet of everlastings.
“They are a beautiful native flower, they require almost no maintenance and once they’ve been sown, they will self seed for the following year, so they’re terrific.” They named the business ‘Lucinda’s Everlastings’ after their first daughter. Jen has half-joked that now they have another daughter, Zara, they will need another wildflower line.
“I think we can do so much in the wildflower industry, we’ll just keep at it and see where it goes,” Rob said.
Back to topIn These Desert Days, Success Is Everlasting
Nigel Wilson, October 23, 2006 ‘The Australian’ newspaper
RAINFALL around Kojonup, almost 300km southeast of Perth, is only about half what it was last year. But for Rob and Jen Warburton that's been more of an advantage than a loss.
In the past four years the couple, both aged 34, have developed a business producing seeds of the everlasting wildflower -- the pink-and-white flower that in September and October turns vast arid parts of Western Australia into a swath of pink and white.
"Normally we get 550mm (of rain) a year around here but this year it's been less than 300mm -- but everlastings, being a desert plant, thrive. They certainly don't like being water-logged," Mr Warburton said.
"We can't complain about the rain here because its pretty reliable compared with other areas. But what we've got is just right for everlastings."
On the 2200ha property, cleared in the 1950s by Rob's father, everlastings take up less than 3ha.
Yet packing them for customers, which ranged from mining companies wanting to revegetate disused sites to suburbanites seeking to disguise the bareness of a newly-built house, is keeping the couple busy.
"The property was originally cleared to run merino sheep but around eight years ago we branched out and about 50 per cent is now producing canola, wheat and barley," Mr Warburton said yesterday.
Even with this diversification, farming returns were variable and revenue needed to be supplemented by whatever means was available.
Everlastings are a desert plant but at their business, named Lucinda's Everlastings after their four-year-old daughter, they enjoy reliable rainfall.
Producing everlasting seeds seemed a good idea at the time when the couple was marketing to wholesalers but now it's the retail side of the business that has kept everyone busy.
A 10g packet contains enough seeds to provide a 10sqm carpet of everlasting.
"Cut everlastings will last a month or so in a vase while after being hung up to dry they'll last virtually forever," Mr Warburton said. That's something our grandparents knew, with dried everlastings being frequently the only decoration in a dusty West Australian outback home.
Mr Warburton said the traditional everlasting in pink and white with a yellow centre remained the most popular flower but there was also demand for those with a dark red centre.
While Kojonup advertises an annual wildflower festival in September, Mr Warburton concedes that tourists are usually attracted to the huge displays further north around Geraldton.
"For us, the everlastings are something we can do for much of the year, not just when the wildflowers are in bloom."
Back to topA Trial Of Everlasting Beauty
Lynetter Carew-Reid, 2006 ‘The Farm Weekly’ newspaper
Rob Egerton-Warburton runs sheep, grows canola, wheat, barley and experiments with innovative pastures, but most of all he is tickled pink with his everlastings. Stretching like a vibrant pink and white carpet between a canola crop and a 200ha of pristine bushland it is thanks to his wife Jennifer that the off-beat enterprise ever came to fruition.
And now, in a time when water-wise gardens are coming into their own, WA’s best known wildflowers are set to take on Australia’s gardeners.
Through Mrs Egerton-Warburton’s involvment in landcare, she was given 1kg of seed by licensed seed collector Keith Smith, who was picking provenance seed in their native bushland for a local landcare project.
His instructions were simple enough but cultivating the native species on a commercial scale was challenging and in the four years since they grew their first 0.4ha crop in 2002 that have learned much.
Instead of hand broadcasting the seed mixed with a bucket of sand and losing an entire year of production when the crop was overtaken by weeds they now mechanically drop the seed onto a well-prepared 3ha bed.
They have had to make some modifications to their header but they are able to direct harvest, which has a good seed weight that is lighter than the trash, and they have leaned that a liberal dash of Flexi-N does wonders for plant vigour and flower size.
While agraonmy is Mr Egerton-Warburton’s strong point – he farms 2200ha south-west of Kojonup – his wife involved herself in packaging, marketing and promotion, taking them on a pathway few farmers ever have the opportunity to undertake with mainstram sheep and crop production.
From a bulk sale in the first year to Great Southern seed distributer Nindethana – which included the seed in revegetation mixes – they developed Lucinda’s Everlastings, naming the venture after their four-year old daughter, and worked with others to design labels, counter displays and a website, www.everlastings.com.au
Today they distribute to a network of more than 70 retail outlets in WA including Plants Plus and tourist information centres and are on the verge of taking the next step of marketing interstate.
While the venture has been interesting and profitable, Mr Warburton said it was a limited and fickle market but there was scope to expand.
‘The demand is a bit cyclical, but I think it is a lack of awareness, but they pretty well grow anywhere and are well suited to dry environments’ he said.
Carpets of everlastings may be WA’s signature, but gardeners in other states know little about the flowers’ virtues and the Egerton-Warburtons are working to change that.
They have found at least one school in Perth that will make packets of everlasting seeds its main fundraiser instead of chocolates.
They are also developing small but artistically packaged seeds as bonnbonnaire and took a package to the US when Mrs Warburton visited her sister Shirley in Boston.
‘From that we have one landscaper who is keen to use them if they do well and there are no problems sending seed there,’ she said.
Mrs Egerton-Warburton said the beauty of the everlastings was that once sown they would regenerate every year with the winter rains and reward gardeners for weeks with a show of flashy pink and white regardless whether they were in the ground or in a vase.
What the Warburtons have not yet tapped is the plant’s namesake – the dried flower market – but that might come later. For now they are concentrating only on seed sales.
Following the success of their everlastings the Warburtons are looking to grow other arid native flowers.
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