By Renee Wood
The Big Bouquet gerbera and alpaca farm will soon be blooming on screens after filming with The Garden Gurus crew on Saturday 9 October.
Presenter and horticulturalist Bonnie-Marie Hibbs visited the farm to meet with owner Natalie Kerst to learn all about the cut flower farm and it’s operations.
Dana Stoddart from the Big Bouquet said it’s a great opportunity to promote Australian grown flowers.
“We really just want to show people what we do, we’re not only a tourist attraction – we sell wholesale gerberas around the country on a large scale,” Dana Stoddart said.
Presenter Bonnie-Marie Hibbs said the main feature will be on making a flower bouquet to inspire watchers during the lockdown.
“It’s about being creative when maybe it is hard to be creative at the moment, when you can’t go out and you can’t go express yourself as easily. So using flowers and playing with them that way you can really have a lot of fun with it,” Bonnie-Marie Hibbs said.
“It can do a lot of good for people as well from a mental place but also just from creativity, I think it’s so important to stay as creative as you can through the lockdown.”
The horticulturist said she was very impressed with the varieties on display, many that she didn’t know of.
“They grow over 62,000 gerberas on the site and they range in the most incredible colors, some that I actually didn’t know existed – and I have quite a long history in horticulture, so they’re doing some really amazing things in terms of breeding and what they’re bringing into Australia for the cut flower market.”
Another small piece of the upcoming show will be on using alpaca poo as fertiliser.
“The good thing is it doesn’t actually burn your plants. It is something that you don’t have to age down like other animal manures where you can use it right away, so it’s pretty handy,” Bonnie-Marie said.
It was a welcomed visit for the farm which is generally open to the public with visitors allowed to view the large glass house, meet the alpacas and dine at the cafe.
“We’ve been working really hard and lockdown has been quite difficult on a lot of us. Our team has been here five days a week together through the whole thing, so we are really looking towards opening again – we’ve missed the public being here,” Dana said.
The Gardening Gurus airs on Channel Nine but also has a strong following on social media, Dana said it’s great to be part of program that’s educational.
“They live stream on Facebook, and people can ask questions and they’ll answer, so it’s good people are really into gardening can see the way we do things to inspire them as well.
The episode is expected to air in the next couple of weeks.
