General Store

An Adelaide Hills garden and landscaping yard working across two sites, at Verdun and Woodside. Alongside bulk soils, mulches, gravels and decorative stone, there's a nursery stocking plants, pots and garden ornaments, plus seasoned split firewood in the cooler months and a weighbridge at both yards. Staff offer advice tailored to the job. Open seven days, with longer weekday hours.

Lin Stanton started this stall at Salamanca Market in 1982. He ran it until his death in 2020, when he left it to friends. They relaunched in 2021, keeping the secondhand bins alongside new vinyl — jazz, rock, electronic, soul, punk, country — and a shelf of Tasmanian releases. Still Saturdays only, still Stall 226.

Five minutes from Darwin's CBD, Air Raid Records holds the NT's only dedicated physical music store — vinyl, CD, every format — alongside the territory's first non-alcoholic bar and a hire-ready event space. DJ equipment, a jukebox, karaoke rigs: it's a record shop that moonlights as a production house.

A family-run garden centre in the heart of Annandale village, in Sydney's Inner West, trading since 1980. The compact site packs in native plants, potted colour and WALLGARDEN vertical-garden systems, with staff who deal in knowledgeable, impartial advice rather than the hard sell. Close to the local shops and bus routes, it's the kind of neighbourhood nursery a suburb keeps coming back to. Open seven days, 9am to 5pm.

A Northbridge furniture showroom and café occupying the same floor space, with HAY, Muuto, Ferm Living and Carl Hansen Søn among the stocked labels. The café — Dine by Arrival Hall — runs alongside the shelving and sofas rather than being sectioned off, which makes browsing feel less like shopping and more like spending time somewhere worth being.

A family-owned art and craft supply specialist serving professionals, students, and hobby artists alike. They stock oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolours, canvas, and stretcher bars, with the added convenience of custom canvas stretching available on-site.

A charming independent bookstore specialising in romance and fantasy literature, nestled in Fyshwick. This cozy haven caters to avid readers seeking their next beloved escape through carefully curated selections. The store also hosts community events like book clubs and workshops, creating a welcoming space for book lovers to connect.

A Melbourne garden supplier in Templestowe, where a plant nursery sits alongside a yard of building and landscaping materials — aggregates, sand, cement and steel — under one independent roof. The kind of place equally useful for a punnet of seedlings or a trailer-load of mulch, with a second clearance centre out at Plenty.

A Murwillumbah nursery on Wollumbin Street run by horticulturists Mark and Anthony, stocking native species alongside tropical foliage, shade-loving indoor plants, perennials, succulents and seasonal seedlings. Pots, compost, mulch and fertiliser round out the range, and the pair trade on hands-on garden advice for anyone planting a bed, a balcony or a bright indoor corner. Open Monday to Saturday, with shorter Sunday hours.

An insecticide-free nursery on King Road at Oakford, in Perth's rural south-east, given over entirely to Australian native plants. The benches run to banksias and hakeas, eremophilas, the scarlet Verticordia grandis and grafted forms of the peppermint Agonis flexuosa, sold as tube stock and potted specimens. Staff offer horticultural guidance on what will thrive in local ground. Open seven days, 9am to 4.30pm.

A close-knit family garden centre on Avoca Road, on the edge of Bundaberg, run since 2010. Alongside native and tropical plants suited to the local climate, it stocks the working end of gardening — soils, mulches, pebbles and fertilisers, sold by the bag or the truckload — plus hanging baskets and landscaping supplies. Delivery runs seven days across the Bundaberg area. Open Monday to Saturday 7am to 4.30pm and Sunday to 3pm; closed public holidays.

A Barossa Valley garden centre with roots back to 1951, when Eric Bartsch grew seedlings for local farmers; it settled at its Nuriootpa site, on the main road toward Tanunda, in 1998. Today it trades as a full garden centre on Barossa Valley Way, open to visitors seven days a week. Open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5.30pm and Sunday 9am to 5pm; closed Good Friday, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day.

A community native-plant nursery on Parklands Drive at North Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, run by the local Barung Landcare group. It's renowned for growing local rainforest species and other natives of the region's ecosystems, sold to the public alongside books, with planting advice and a plant-identification service on hand. A monthly stocklist tracks what's ready. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 9am to 3pm.

A boutique garden centre on Bay Road in bayside Sandringham, known for its hydrangeas and a seasonal bench of citrus, roses, berries, succulents and winter colour. Decorative pots run from Cretan terracotta to French glaze, and the business extends into landscaping through its own gardener and a small cafe on site. Pruning demonstrations and seasonal advice keep regulars coming back. Open seven days.

A family-owned production nursery on Agars Lane at Berry, on the NSW South Coast, said to be the largest of its kind in the Illawarra. Some 100,000 plants are raised on its four acres, most grown pesticide-free and locally, so they're suited to local conditions. Despite the wholesale scale, the gates are open to the public and qualified horticulturists are on hand for advice. Open Monday to Friday 7am to 4pm and Saturday 8am to 4pm; closed Sunday.

A small not-for-profit nursery on Williamstown Road at Port Melbourne, run by Westgate Biodiversity to bring indigenous plants back to the Melbourne region. It grows local species — the plants of the area's original ecosystems — for gardeners and revegetation alike, and welcomes the public in to buy them. Open Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm and Saturday 10am to 3pm, with retail closed over summer.

A gift shop dealing in soft toys and collectible figurines, much of it imported from Japan and the UK. The shelves run to Jellycat plush, Sonny Angel and SMISKI figurines, Chiikawa goods, Miffy, squishies and the UK brand Nomielle. Jellycat makes up a large share of the range, from the Amuseables line of food-shaped plush — cinnamon buns, boiled eggs, burgers — to larger bears. Orders come packed with a small card.

Phillip Island's local garden centre, trading from Newhaven and Cowes with an everyday range of plants, soils and mulches, pots and garden decor, plus firewood, stock feed and fireplaces for the cooler months. A friendly crew, a loyalty card and delivery across the Bass Coast mark it as a genuinely local operation rather than a big-box shed. Open weekdays and Saturday mornings.

A sprawling family garden centre in Sydney's south-west, on the corner of Elizabeth Drive and Wilson Road at Bonnyrigg. Rows of indoor and outdoor plants and vegetable seedlings sit alongside pots, statues, ponds and raised garden beds, with soils, bark and landscaping supplies out the back. Five horticulturists work the floor, and the site also holds a flower shop, a cafe and a homewares centre — a one-stop suburban nursery built for browsing.

A bookshop trading among the butchers and providores of Belconnen's Capital Food Market, established in 2000 and run by Leisha and Matt Sutton. It started out selling remaindered stock and now carries new releases alongside a deep backlist. Leisha trained as an early childhood teacher, and the children's shelves show it, down to titles published specifically for dyslexic and reluctant readers.

A country nursery tucked behind the service station in Mitchell, out in Queensland's Maranoa. The range leans practical and generous: roses and fruit trees, indoor plants, seedlings, a run of hoyas and, as the owners put it, lots and lots more. It's a small, locally run stop for gardeners in a town where the nearest big centre is a long drive away. Open seven days.

A volunteer-run community nursery on Fulton Road in Blackburn South, propagating plants indigenous to Melbourne's Whitehorse district. Tubestock sells for a couple of dollars, each plant tagged with an information sheet and QR code, and a searchable plant database helps gardeners match species to their patch. It's a not-for-profit labour of local knowledge rather than a commercial centre. Open Wednesday and Friday mornings, plus the last Saturday of most months.

A family-owned garden centre on Barney Street in Kiama, run since 2012 as a plant nursery and landscape-supplies hub for home gardeners and landscapers across the south coast. The Quarry Cafe sits on site for a coffee between the aisles. Open weekdays from 7am and Saturday mornings; closed Sundays and public holidays.

A family-run nursery on Tinney Road at Upper Caboolture, north of Brisbane, worked by the Hennessey family. The website keeps things brief, but this is a genuine independent grower's yard rather than a chain outlet — a small local nursery for gardeners in the Caboolture district. Enquiries are by phone or through the nursery's Instagram.

An Armidale nursery on Kentucky Street built around cold-hardy plants for the New England tablelands, with a particular strength in roses — bush, climbing, floribunda, hybrid tea, standard and David Austin among them. Design help and a well-stocked online catalogue back up the retail yard, aimed at gardeners chasing colour and structure in a cool, high-country climate.

One of Melbourne's best-known community nurseries, tucked inside the CERES environment park at Brunswick East. Run on permaculture principles, it leans toward backyard food production — seedlings and productive plants — but also carries a broad indoor range, from monstera to fiddle-leaf fig. A bookstore sits alongside, and staff hand out practical growing advice. Open seven days on the corner of Roberts and Stewart Streets, across from the park's cafe.

A bonsai nursery set among the historic gardens of Cloudehill, in the hill village of Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges. The focus is Japanese: bonsai and niwaki trees, the tools, wire and ceramics to keep them, and courses for those learning the craft. Visitors can browse and buy the handcrafted trees on site. Open weekends 10am to 5pm, and Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10am to 3pm; closed Wednesday.

A boutique garden centre in the Adelaide Hills, open seven days from 10am to 4pm. The range runs to indoor plants, seedlings and edibles, camellias and azaleas, roses and shrubs, bulbs, plus potting mixes, fertilisers, pots and planters. Staff offer advice on what will thrive, and the nursery also runs workshops and sells books and gift cards.

A cool-climate garden of some five acres on the Olinda-Monbulk Road, home to the Diggers Garden Shop with its heirloom seeds and plants, and the Chojo nursery of feature trees for Japanese gardens and bonsai. A restaurant sits among the perennials. The garden and shop open seven days, 10am to 5pm through the warmer months and to 4pm in winter.

A long-standing nursery and garden-supplies yard on Colchester Road in Kilsyth, in Melbourne's outer east. Alongside trees, shrubs and herbs it carries the practical end of gardening — soils, mulches, gravels and sands — with click-and-collect and delivery for bigger jobs. Experienced staff and a seven-day roster make it a dependable local for both the weekend gardener and building projects.

A garden centre and landscape yard on Piccadilly Road at Crafers, up in the Adelaide Hills. One side is plants, pots and planting advice; the other is bulk supplies — mulches, gravels, sands, soils, cement, irrigation and retaining walls — with pickup and delivery seven days. An independent, locally run stop for both the weekend gardener and a serious landscaping project. Open daily.

A boutique nursery behind Doncaster Road in North Balwyn, open since 2003 and stocked with interesting and unusual plants sourced from Victoria's better growers. A qualified horticulturist offers advice, and the business extends into floral design, landscape design and garden maintenance. Small, personal and plant-led rather than a big shed. Open Monday to Saturday.

One of the country's more unusual nurseries, tucked into Mount Macedon and holding more than two thousand rare plants gathered from around the world. Run by plantsman and author Stephen Ryan, it invites a slow meander through the collection, with a cafe, the Trading Post, for refreshments. Open Monday, Tuesday and Friday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm; closed Wednesday and Thursday.

The retail nursery at Edendale, a community environment farm on Gastons Road in Eltham, grows more than 100,000 local native plants a year from seed and cuttings gathered across Nillumbik's reserves and remnant bushland. The public can buy indigenous tubestock and pots here, along with seasonal vegetable seedlings, compost bins and worm farms. A member of Nursery and Garden Industry Victoria. Open daily, 10am to 4.30pm.

Perth's largest display nursery for advanced trees, spread across six acres at Gnangara with more than six hundred varieties - WA natives, deciduous, evergreen and exotic - from 25-litre containers up to 1000-litre specimens. Supply, delivery and planting are all offered. The retail nursery opens weekdays 7am to 3pm and Saturday 9.30am to 2.30pm.

Vlado Borovac has been making the trip to India for over 17 years, returning with bone inlay furniture, hand-carved sculptures and reclaimed timber pieces he sources directly from the workshops that make them. The Norwood showroom on Osmond Terrace also carries rattan made to order from Indonesia. The approach is accumulative rather than matched — pieces that outlast trends rather than follow them.

Behind an Art Deco frontage on Crookwell's main street, more than twenty independent makers share a single grand room, with clothing, jewellery, homewares, furniture, art, plants and gifts arranged along original timber counters and a former bank strongroom still set into the wall. The building went up in 1919 as a drapery and hardware store, burned down in 1938 and was rebuilt in the style that still defines it, all arched windows and marble. Opened in 2021 by a local couple, the collective doubles as a cafe: a weekend coffee bar pours brews and cake, and a nursery occupies the rear. It has quickly become a reason visitors turn off the highway toward Crookwell, and a working model for how a small tablelands town keeps its retail worth the drive.

At the end of the road above the Pioneer Valley, this rainforest-village store is the social and provisions hub of Eungella, the Queensland town billed as the platypus capital. Part cafe, part grocer, part community post office and tourist stop, it pours barista coffee and serves pies, toasties, burgers and homemade apple turnovers, and stocks seasonal local produce including Eungelladale full-cream milk and local beef and garlic grown in the valley. A gift section carries work by local makers, and an old collection of tools and bygones lends the place a museum-ish clutter. For visitors making the hour's climb from Mackay to spot platypus at Broken River, it is the obvious place to stop.

An Adelaide plant nursery dealing in indoor and outdoor greenery, from everyday staples to hard-to-find rare collector species, along with the pots and accessories to go with them. Independently run with shopfronts at Royston Park and Modbury, it sells both in store and online.

An orchid nursery on Boundary Road at Thornlands, in Redland City south-east of Brisbane. The shelves are given over to orchids and everything that keeps them going — potting mixes, fertilisers, growing aids, pot hangers and accessories — with staff who know the genus. It's a working nursery you can walk into seven days a week, mornings through the afternoon, with mail order for growers further afield.

A family-run Ballarat nursery on Leith Street, trading for close to five decades with a deep, wide-ranging catalogue — natives, water plants, hoyas, flowering perennials, roses, shrubs, seedlings, seeds and trees among more than a thousand lines. A cafe and gift shop share the site, making it as much a weekend outing as a plant run.

Six kilometres up the Wilmot Road from Forth, a native bushland garden threaded with meandering paths where a horticulturalist of forty years' standing propagates Tasmanian and Australian plants: ground covers, shrubs, climbers and trees, along with the stakes and guards to get them established. Advice comes matched to Tasmania's soils and climate zones. No mobile signal reaches here, so bring cash. Open Friday and Saturday.

A full-service garden centre on Forest Way at Belrose, one of a small family of independent nurseries across Sydney's northern suburbs. The range runs wide — plants from succulents and cacti to natives, plus pots, water features, turf, firewood, tools and home decor — backed by a rewards program, home delivery and in-store garden advice. A one-stop local for the northern beaches gardener.

A long-running independent on Angelo Street in South Perth, part plant nursery and part gift shop, trading here for more than three decades. Plants and giftware share the floor, sold in-store and online. A neighbourhood spot rather than a big-box centre, open seven days with a later close on Saturdays.

One of Melbourne's larger independent plant destinations, on Springvale Road at Braeside in the city's south-east. A sprawling nursery with a licensed cafe and a cluster of specialist garden businesses sharing the site, it draws a steady weekend crowd of gardeners. Open seven days, 9am to 5pm.

An Alice Springs retail nursery built around arid-zone plants, from tubestock to advanced specimens, run by a horticulturist with decades in desert gardening and offering consultancy alongside the plants. A specialist source for gardeners working with the Centre's climate. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.

A volunteer-run community nursery at Ambergate, near Busselton, growing some six hundred native species of the south-west for local gardens and revegetation. The retail area welcomes visitors through the week, with plant sales on the first Saturday of the month. Open Monday to Friday, 9am to 2pm.

A native plant nursery on Victoria Street in Cardwell, run by the Girringun Aboriginal Corporation and specialising in bush tucker and local native species. Part of a broader organisation that also runs an art centre and ranger programs, the nursery is open to the public to browse and buy.

A family nursery established in 2000 and set about ten kilometres north of Traralgon, now the largest grower of native seedlings in Gippsland with around a hundred species raised for the region. The public is welcome to buy, whether a single plant for the garden or a hundred for a plantation.

North Canberra's garden centre at Federation Square in Nicholls, open since 1995. The owners have built the shop less like rows of stock and more like a walk through a garden: an indoor jungle of houseplants gives way to a gift section of pots, ornaments and homewares. Qualified horticulturists staff the floor, with compost, potting mix and seasonal advice pitched to the local climate. Open seven days.

A Gungahlin garden centre tucked into Federation Square at Nicholls, run as much like an indoor jungle and gift shop as a nursery. Since 1995 it has carried plants, pots, ornaments and gifts alongside the compost and potting mix, the aisles arranged so a visit feels like a stroll through a lush garden. Open seven days a week.

A Guildford garden centre on James Street, on the historic fringe of Perth's Swan Valley, trading for more than thirty years. It's known for ornamental and fruit trees — billing itself as the country's largest retailer of bare-root deciduous trees — alongside natives, perennials, edibles, indoor plants and garden decor. Qualified horticulturists handle plant and pest questions, soil pH tests and landscaping advice. Open seven days.

Matcha bowls arrive from Yokohama via stone-milled tradition — the Sakura Shino Tataki and Ibushi Kinsai both under $60. Alongside ceramics, there are fragrance pouches and cherry blossom incense holders, all sourced from artisans across Japan. On Beaufort Street, it's a quiet argument for slowing down a meal.

A small plant-and-pot shop on Boundary Road at Thornlands, in Brisbane's bayside Redlands. The focus is succulents — sold singly or in made-up combinations — alongside a rotating cast of seasonal plants and the decorative pots to put them in. It's a modest, personal operation, open Tuesday to Sunday through the middle of the day, with Mondays by appointment.

Across Murray Avenue from the river in central Renmark, a fashion, homewares and giftware store stocking a wide, affordable spread: ladies' fashion labels including Elm, Foxwood and Talisman, luxury sleepwear, Pure homewares, jewellery and candles. It has become a fixture of the town's main retail strip, known locally for seasonal set-pieces such as a dedicated pop-up Christmas shop, and it keeps deliberately to a bricks-and-mortar model, taking phone and social-media orders and running occasional deliveries to Adelaide rather than a full webstore. The mix of clothing and home is broad rather than specialist, making it a reliable general stop for a gift or an outfit while passing through the Riverland's largest town.

A destination nursery on Robert Boden Grove at Yarralumla, in Canberra's inner south. The benches run to roses, peonies, hydrangeas, clematis and flowering shrubs, with fruit and nut trees, berries, herbs and vegetables for the productive garden, plus a wall of indoor and outdoor pots. Organic pest controls, mushroom kits and giftware round out the range, and staff give horticultural advice. Open every day, nine to five.

One of Adelaide's oldest garden centres, on The Parade at Beulah Park since 1928 and tracing its roots to a nursery Ernst Heyne founded in 1869. The yard runs deep on the basics - roses, fruit trees and citrus, seeds, potting mix, pots and tools - with indoor plants and ornaments under cover and a coffee van parked on site. Open seven days.

Alex Taplin's family-run shop on Jetty Road has been outfitting Glenelg homes for over 15 years. The stock runs from Robert Gordon ceramics and GlobeWest furniture to Seed & Sprout pantry goods and Sunnylife outdoor pieces — the kind of edited range that makes gift-buying genuinely painless. Strong on Australian brands, light on fuss.

A home interiors shop in Mona Vale, stocking linen, bedding and manchester alongside rugs, throws, cushions and brass homewares. The shelves run to candles, soaps, washes and creams, plus glassware, placemats, napkins and doormats, with French linen and loungewear among the range. Staff work the floor to help customers find what they're after, in a shop set up as a place to browse for the home.

A family-run garden centre on Military Road in Mosman, backed by a five-acre growing ground out at Dural that supplies much of what fills the benches. The range runs from cacti and orchids to roses and hedging, with pots and fountains, potting mixes and tools, and a shelf of homewares by the door. Open seven days, nine to five.

A garden centre on Redland Bay Road at Alexandra Hills, between Capalaba and Victoria Point in Brisbane's bayside. Nursery benches of roses, federation daisies, kangaroo paws and hoyas share the site with a gift-and-homewares section and a cafe doing breakfast, lunch and coffee. Open most days — closed Tuesdays — with early weekend starts for the keen gardener.

A Sunshine Coast nursery on Amarina Avenue at Mooloolaba, planted out as a lush walk-through rather than rows of benches. Indoor stock leans to snake plants, pothos and fiddle-leaf figs; outside it's tropicals, flowering shrubs and natives chosen for the coastal climate. What won't fit in the car can be delivered around Brisbane and the surrounds.

Two acres of Labrador given over to palms and tropical foliage, where fronds crowd in beside water features, statues, ceramic pots and Bali-hut thatching. Indoor plants and succulents fill out the range, and an on-site shop stocks decorative goods for the home and garden. A qualified horticulturist is on hand for design questions, making it a sprawling, jungly stop for anyone kitting out a Gold Coast garden.

A grower-direct nursery spread across two Adelaide Hills landmarks - the old Johnston Brewery at Oakbank and the former Mount Lofty railway station at Stirling. Both are part plant yard, part destination, with gift and farm shops, antiques and an in-house cafe alongside the plants, and dogs welcome on a lead. The shops open ten to four, seven days.

A two-hectare garden high in the Dandenongs at Kalorama, planted since 1965 with more than 1,400 species of Australian natives and kept as one of the country's few public gardens given wholly to indigenous flora. A well-stocked nursery sells natives to take home, with staff on hand to match plant to spot. Entry is free, the paths are accessible, and there's a community room and long views. Open Tuesday to Sunday.

One of Australia's best-known native plant nurseries, on York Road at Mount Evelyn in the Yarra Ranges foothills and trading for more than forty years. Over 3,500 species and cultivars — banksias, boronias, eucalypts, grevilleas and much else — most of them grown on site. A gift shop of Australian homewares and fashion and the bushfood-leaning Paperbark Cafe make a full day of it. Open daily.

A stationery and art-supply shop specialising in pens and the tools that go with them. Fountain pens, dip pens, calligraphy nibs and brush pens sit alongside bottled inks, notebooks and journals, watercolours, pencils and paper, drawn from brands including Lamy, Pilot, Sailor, Kaweco, Leuchtturm1917, Faber-Castell and Schmincke. Nibs are checked before they leave the store, and services extend to name debossing and pen repair parts.

A specialist water-garden nursery on the Pacific Highway at Mt Kuring-Gai, on Sydney's northern fringe. The focus is aquatic and pond planting — water plants and the supplies that go with them — rather than the usual garden-centre range. A niche destination for anyone building or stocking a pond.

Few country stores can claim the continuity of this Wallace Street institution, trading since 1913 and run by four generations of the same family — one of the oldest family-owned businesses in New South Wales. Founded by Edward 'Teddy' Mutton and his wife Polly, it passed to their son Len in 1940 and today is managed by his granddaughter. The rambling premises still functions as a genuine general store, stocking clothing, kitchenware, haberdashery, toys and the kind of practical odds and ends that have largely vanished from small towns. Its survival owes much to Braidwood's protected streetscape — the whole town is heritage-listed — and to a loyal local trade, but the shop is also a destination in its own right for visitors drawn to its unbroken century of retailing.

A not-for-profit native plant nursery on Johnston Road at Vittoria, just outside Bunbury, growing for the South West's revegetation and rehabilitation work since 1998. The benches carry more than 400 species and varieties of Western Australian natives - one of the widest ranges in the region - sold to home gardeners and landcare projects alike, with staff who know the local flora.

A community landcare nursery on International Drive at Ayr, propagating native and local species drawn from the Burdekin's own country. It doubles as a meeting and learning place for volunteers and members, who take home a native plant each year, and opens its gates to the public three mornings a week. Open Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, eight to noon.

A Hobart design store on Macquarie Street, run by Lucy Given, who grew up in Tasmania, spent a working life in interior design across Melbourne, Sydney, London and Florence, and came back to open LUC. in 2013. The floor is her eye: furniture and homewares from the international design canon — Tom Dixon, Vitra, Alessi, Kartell, Herman Miller — alongside Australian names like Dinosaur Designs and Mud. The local thread is Lucasa, LUC.'s own range of homewares, art and objects made by Tasmanian artists and makers — its counterweight to the imported labels, and the reason it reads as more than a showroom.

A Bendigo nursery that has been in the same family for four generations, trading since 1888 as one of Australia's oldest horticultural businesses. The Retreat Road site sells plants, flowers, fruit trees and garden supplies, with staff on hand for the advice that keeps regulars coming back. Open seven days, with shorter hours on Sundays and public holidays.

Leanne started out as a florist before moving into curtains, blinds and interior styling — and Magnolia Leaf, opened in 2021, is where those threads converge. The Payneham Road shop stocks homewares, rugs, cushions, artificial plants, jewellery and baby gifts, with curtain consultations available for those who want to go further than a candle.

A retail collective on Sale's Foster Street that hands its floor to more than a hundred Gippsland makers, growers and small businesses at once. The mix runs across homewares, gifts, crafts, fashion and fresh flowers, with an emphasis on locally made and sustainable goods, a single shopfront that works as a shifting showcase for the region's cottage producers. It sits alongside the same operators' vintage warehouse next door, together turning this stretch of the street into a browsing destination. Open daily, it is a practical answer to finding local work without driving farm gate to farm gate across the district.

Part nursery, part aquarium, set in a converted warehouse near the West End Markets a kilometre from Brisbane's centre. Indoor and outdoor plants, succulents and aquatic species share the floor with fish, pond supplies, terrariums, pots and kokedama, and the shop runs workshops on terrariums, miniature gardens and ceramics with local makers. A characterful inner-city stop for plants and the gear to keep them alive. Open seven days.

A gift shop on Bandjalong Crescent stocking Australian-made homewares, jewellery, fashion and children's goods. Notable for its range of natural body oils — honeysuckle and bergamot, ylang ylang and grapefruit — alongside ceramics, tea towels, gumboots and greetings cards. Free gift wrapping included. The kind of neighbourhood shop that handles most occasions without requiring a trip into town.

A plant farm in the hills at Wundowie, north-east of Perth, growing Western Australian native plants and climate-suited tubestock alongside advanced evergreen, semi-deciduous, deciduous and fruit trees. Stock runs from small forestry tubes to established specimens ready for the garden. The nursery keeps regular hours through the week and on weekends, easing back a little over the hotter months.

A Southern Highlands garden centre on the Old Hume Highway at Balaclava, just outside Mittagong, stocking plants, garden supplies and a rotating range of home and garden pieces. The cool-climate setting shapes what grows well here, and the shop keeps to simple hours — nine to five, seven days — for anyone passing on the old highway. Independent and locally run.

A Limestone Coast garden centre on Jubilee Highway West, stocking plants across every size from groundcovers to advanced trees, plus conifers, grasses, natives, hedging and seasonal fruit trees, roses and aquatic plants. Pots, giftware, potting mixes and the usual tonics and pest controls round out the shed. Locally run and open seven days for gardeners across Mount Gambier and the surrounding country.

A Southern Highlands nursery tucked off Berrima Road at Moss Vale, trading under the line 'for people who love plants.' The range leans to trees, shrubs, natives and roses suited to the cool-climate gardens of the district. Winter trading runs Monday to Saturday, nine to four, with a later ten o'clock start on Sundays.

A not-for-profit native nursery in Perth's south, tucked through the gates of the Rockingham Golf Club at Cooloongup, propagating around 100,000 Western Australian seedlings a year for bush regeneration and home gardens. It is a Garden Industry Australia certified grower, with a plant list refreshed through the season. Retail hours are short — Monday to Wednesday mornings — so it pays to time a visit.

A cold-climate plant nursery at Navigators, in the hills east of Ballarat, specialising in frost-hardy stock chosen to hold up through the district's hard winters. Like many high-country growers it shuts over the coldest months, taking a break through June, July and August before reopening for spring. Worth timing for the warmer end of the year.

A family-run independent bookshop on Victoria Street in Warragul, which makes it the bookshop for West Gippsland. General stock across adult fiction, children's and YA, and non-fiction, with a book club and a reading challenge running out of it. A member of the Australian Booksellers Association. Closed Sundays; Saturday mornings only.

A small indigenous nursery on Wadawurrung country at Wallington, on the Bellarine Peninsula, growing plants of local provenance — trees, shrubs, groundcovers, wildflowers, grasses, sedges and wetland species — most of it propagated on site from germination up. Books and gifts sit alongside the plants. The nursery opens by appointment, with a self-serve plant stand out the front around the clock.

A Malvern East homewares shop opened by Nat Wheeler and Kristy Sadlier in 2013, after the pair met at mother's group and bonded over Scandinavian design that wasn't yet available in Australia. The name is Finnish for elephant. The shop sits across cushions, throws, ceramics, art prints, and an in-house line called norsu Studio, alongside an interior design studio operating from the same address. Open seven days. There's also a styled cabin you can stay in to test-drive the look before you buy.

Trading as a drapery since 1913 in a building raised three years earlier, this country store anchors the heritage main street of Northampton, one of the oldest settlements in Western Australia outside Perth. The stock reads like a rural general store of another era brought forward: clothing, hats and footwear, haberdashery, knitting and crochet supplies, quilting fabric, craft, sunglasses and shelves of local and regional books. A room at the rear holds a museum of more than one hundred sewing machines, viewable for a gold-coin donation and singled out by visitors as a genuine curiosity. Passed through only a handful of owners across its long life, from Stokes to the Williams family drapery until 2003, it has kept its shopkeeping intact rather than modernising it away. On the Hampton Road heritage walk, it reads less as a shop than a working piece of the town's history.

Trading from an 1890s storefront in Nundle that once served as the district's gold and produce exchange, this restored general store was brought back to life in 1999 after two decades shuttered. Owners Duncan and Megan Trousdale have stocked it with goods chosen to outlast fashion: Falcon and Romanian enamelware, Mason Cash mixing bowls, Fowlers preserving kits, Redecker brushware, gardening tools and classic shaving supplies, heritage and contemporary makers united by a bias toward things built to be handed on. The shopfit honours the building's century of retail, and the buying has earned a following well beyond the village, with a mail-order trade running since 2011. Open over the counter Wednesday to Sunday, it anchors Nundle's small main street and is a destination in its own right for anyone who values well-made household objects.

A Darwin retail nursery on Thorak Road at Knuckey Lagoon, part of a family landscaping business Robert and Wendy started back in 1986. Trees, shrubs, groundcovers, palms and indoor plants fill the yard alongside landscaping supplies, all chosen for the Top End. Open seven days for gardeners working with the tropical north's heat and wet.

A family-friendly retail nursery on Baxter-Tooradin Road at Pearcedale, serving gardeners across the Mornington Peninsula and into Gippsland. The range is broad — natives and palms, bare-rooted fruit trees and roses, ornamentals like Japanese maple and magnolia, hedging, succulents and edibles — with pots, statuary and the usual garden supplies alongside. Open seven days.

A Yorke Peninsula fixture at Kadina, on Port Road, run by the same family for more than forty years — first Snow and Sue, now their son Jamie and his wife Carol. Plants for indoors and out, fruit trees, seeds and bulbs share the site with landscaping and hardware, pool and irrigation gear, and a full pet shop stocking feed for everything from fish to reptiles.

A retail nursery on a rural block outside Darwin, open to the public five days a week and turning up at Parap Markets most Saturdays. The range is built for the Top End — native trees and shrubs, tropical foliage, fruit trees, palms, hedging and indoor plants — set out across a quiet property you can wander. Open Tuesday to Saturday.

A garden super centre and landscape supply yard on Shute Harbour Road at Cannon Valley, on the drive out to Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays. The business grows its own stock and sells across a large open yard: plants, pots, soils and landscaping materials. A practical, family-run stop for gardeners and landscapers in tropical North Queensland. Open seven days, with a shorter Sunday.

A long-standing garden centre at the edge of Cumberland State Forest in West Pennant Hills, on Castle Hill Road in Sydney's leafy north-west. Part of the independent PlantsPlus group, it carries a full nursery range for the suburban garden and opens seven days a week from half past eight in the morning — a handy stop before or after a wander through the forest reserve next door.

Sixty acres of growing ground at Adare, in the Lockyer Valley, run by the family that calls itself the largest independently-owned plant producer and nursery in Queensland. More than forty years on, it raises flower seedlings, vegetables, herbs, trees, shrubs, indoor foliage and fruit, and opens its gates to the public most days — a working production nursery you can walk straight into.

A nursery and plant shop on Williams Street in Broken Hill, holding the line on greenery in the far-west desert city. Pots and plants across a range that has to earn its water out here, open every day of the week. A practical local stop rather than a boutique, with shorter hours on the weekend.

A garden centre tucked onto Sunnydene Road at Chandler, in Brisbane's leafy east, stocking natives, exotics and a particular strength in camellias and shrubs. Plants can be browsed in person across the nursery or reserved through the website's click-and-collect. Small and specialist rather than sprawling. Open Tuesday to Sunday, with later trade on Friday and Saturday.

A nursery and landscaping outfit in Pialligo, on the garden-centre strip east of Canberra, growing hardy natives, grasses, sedges and wetland species alongside advanced trees and hardy exotics. The retail range is backed by its own production nurseries here in the ACT and at Brogo on the far south coast of NSW, supplying home gardens through to revegetation projects.

Step through the door on Bridge Road and you're met not with a handful of familiar taps but with fridge after fridge organised by style — hazy IPAs beside crisp helles, sour gueuze near imperial stouts, Belgian tripels stacked against schwarzbier. This is a shop built by people who think about beer the way others think about wine: by region, by method, by yeast strain. The range runs deep rather than wide-and-shallow, pulling in small Australian brewers alongside imports from the US and Europe, so a curious drinker can move from a local pale ale to a Bavarian dunkel without leaving the aisle. It's a useful corrective to the idea that a bottle shop's job is simply to stock the biggest names — here the point is discovery, whether that's a barrel-aged barleywine, a low-alcohol session brew, or a gluten-free option that hasn't been an afterthought. With a second site in Surrey Hills, the operation has grown without losing its specialist edge: this remains a place for people who read labels, ask questions about hop varieties, and leave with something they hadn't planned on buying. For anyone serious about beer rather than just thirsty, it's essential.

Just north of Kingaroy, on Findowie Road, a welcoming nursery for gardeners of every level. The stock runs to natives and local plants, hardy shrubs and climbers, indoor greenery and kitchen-garden varieties, set among picnic gardens and a butterfly walk. Workshops and garden-club talks fill the calendar, dogs on leads are welcome and the grounds are wheelchair accessible. Open Thursday through Monday.

On Todd Mall in Alice Springs, Red Kangaroo stocks Australian books with genuine intent — First Nations titles like Tyson Yunkaporta's *Sand Talk* and Tracy Westerman's *Jilya* sit alongside fiction, poetry, and children's books. Small shop, serious range. Orders ship nationally, wrapped carefully and tracked from the outback.

A Macedon Ranges nursery on Kilmore Road that stocks what it calls the district's most versatile range of greenlife, garden decor and gifts — upwards of 50,000 lines in peak season. Hard-to-source plants are the draw, from Kurume azaleas to a deep bench of trees and shrub standards, and there's a café on site and local delivery. Roughly forty-five minutes out of Melbourne.

The Riverina Highlands Landcare nursery at 5 Gocup Road, Tumut, growing local native plants for gardeners and revegetation alike. More than 150 species pass through — trees, shrubs, groundcovers, sedges, grasses and climbers — sold as tubestock and potted stock, with cash and EFTPOS at the bench. Stock shifts daily, so a call ahead helps. Open Monday to Wednesday, mornings into the early afternoon.

One of Canberra's largest garden centres, set on the nursery strip at Pialligo and built as an all-weather space you can browse whatever the season. Beyond the plants there's a cafe for coffee and lunch and a food emporium, with qualified staff on hand for advice. Open seven days, 8.30am to 5pm.

Canberra's landmark garden centre, set among the market gardens of Pialligo and trading since 1974. The largest all-weather nursery in the capital, it runs to annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs, pots, furniture and giftware, with gardens to wander, a cafe and a food emporium on the same site. Open seven days, 8.30am to 5pm.

On Main Street in Samford Village, northwest of Brisbane, a modern garden centre pairing indoor and garden plants with feature pots, garden accessories and a gift shop. Events, workshops and a local garden club give it a community bent, and the staff trade on the quality of their advice. Open Monday to Saturday, with shorter Sunday and public-holiday hours.

A Jervis Bay garden centre near the shores of St Georges Basin, holding one of the biggest native-plant collections on the South Coast. Plants and seedlings are drawn from premium wholesale nurseries across Australia, and the centre trades on breadth of range without pushing prices up. Open Monday to Saturday, plus Sunday afternoons.

A family-run garden shop on Murray Street in Colac, locally owned and operated since 1989. The range covers seedlings, plants and fruit trees alongside tools and garden decor — the everyday supplies of a working Western District garden — backed by the personalised advice a small business trades on. Open seven days.

A professional audio store at 255 Church Street in Parramatta, dealing in recording and studio gear for musicians and engineers. The range runs across studio monitors from Genelec, microphones from Neumann, DPA and AEA, keyboards and synthesizers, audio interfaces, mixers, PA systems, preamps and acoustic treatment, alongside pre-owned stock. Products carry Australian manufacturer warranty, and the staff share the trade with the people they sell to. The business also runs a studio and rental arm. One of Australia's longer-running professional audio retailers, set up for browsing in person as much as online.

Plant and garden specialists at Vasse, near Busselton in WA's South West, trading since 2011. The nursery keeps a diverse and ever-changing selection of plants of every size, from small pots to advanced specimens, alongside trees and gardening supplies. Open weekdays, with Thursdays and Saturdays by appointment only.

Attached to the State Cinema on Elizabeth Street, this small bookshop leans hard into film, art, architecture, travel, and biography. LAMY pens and Moleskine notebooks sit alongside the shelves. Open late Fridays and Saturdays — sensible hours for somewhere you're likely to arrive after the credits roll.

South Australia's oldest plant nursery, propagating native flora since 1886 within Belair National Park in the Adelaide Hills. The beds run from groundcovers and grasses to shrubs and trees, over a thousand species and many of them local, with a gift shop stocking Australiana, garden ornaments, cards and books on native plants. Staff are native-plant enthusiasts happy to advise, and you shop among wooded hills where koalas share the grounds. Open weekdays 9am to 5pm, weekends 10am to 4pm.

A Rockingham grower that propagates and sells succulents, cacti and houseplants straight from the nursery, open to the public for both retail and wholesale. The range runs deep into collector territory, with echeveria, aloe, haworthia and more grown on site at Hurrell Way. Open Monday and Wednesday to Friday, plus Saturday mornings.

A family-owned nursery on Annangrove Road in Sydney's semi-rural north-west, open every day of the week. The yard runs to a broad general range with free local delivery on larger orders, and the flat, easy layout suits a slow browse. A neighbourhood plant market for the Hills district rather than a boutique. Open seven days, 7am to 5pm.

Halfway between Yeppoon and Emu Park on the Capricorn Coast, a locally owned garden centre that grew out of a turf business. Alongside lawn turf it carries houseplants, flowering and native plants, giftware, garden decor and care products, with landscaping services and an in-house café — a place, as the owners put it, to unwind among the greenery.

A native-plant specialist at the Tanderra Craft Village on Whyalla's Lincoln Highway, beside the visitor centre on the Eyre Peninsula. The stock leans to Australian natives and cottage-garden plants, from acacias, eucalypts, grevilleas and melaleucas through to herbs, succulents, ferns and climbers, with a growing service for special requests. Open most weekdays and the last market weekend of each month.

A supplier of art materials and custom framing, based on Victoria Road in West Ryde. The business stocks art supplies and makes frames to order.

Kingston's family-owned bookshop on Jardine Street stocks the full range — crime, cookbooks, fiction, memoirs — with a particular lean into children's titles and local Canberra authors. The team also runs book fairs and author visits for schools and early learning centres across the region. Small, independent, and doing the work that keeps neighbourhood bookselling alive.

An Adelaide garden centre and homewares shop on Unley Road, trading since 1975 and something of a topiary specialist. Hand-selected plants sit alongside pots, garden pieces and a curated range of homewares: occasional furniture, blue-and-white china, cushions and heritage brands like William Morris and Burgon & Ball. A landmark for local gardeners for close to fifty years, and still current and on-trend. Open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday from 10am.

The Mornington Peninsula home of the Diggers Club, set in the heritage gardens at Heronswood above Dromana. The garden shop deals in heirloom seeds, plants and more, and there's a cafe for coffee and cake among the seasonal displays. Open Thursday to Monday, with hours running a little shorter through the winter months.

A Mount Barker garden centre on Secker Road billing itself as a one-stop shop for the garden, with one of the Adelaide Hills' more extensive ranges of native and exotic plants and trees, plus decorative pots and gardening tools. Landscape design and construction is offered alongside the retail yard. Open weekdays and Saturdays, with shorter Sunday and public-holiday hours.

A family-run garden centre on Banksia Street in Heidelberg, north-east of Melbourne, held by the Humphris family for more than twenty-five years and expanded here in 2025. A full nursery with an in-store cafe, and a sister shop out at Mt Evelyn. Open seven days, 9am to 5pm.

A Yarralumla garden centre on Robert Boden Grove, stocked for the Canberra climate. Roses, peonies, hydrangeas and clematis share the benches with vegetables, herbs, berries and fruit and nut trees, plus flowering shrubs and ornamental trees. Indoor and outdoor pots, garden care, mushroom kits and gift vouchers round it out. Open seven days, 9am to 5pm.

On Elizabeth Street, the maker stocks an edit that runs from knitwear and kokeshi figures to silver jewellery and vintage clothing. Current picks include Na'maka'oh tees, aclp sun hats, and Hibi incense — a narrow selection that trusts your taste enough not to over-explain itself.

A garden centre on Old Cleveland Road at Chandler, in Brisbane's east, laid out around plants, pots, natural stone and outdoor furniture, with an on-site restaurant called the Nurso Nook for when the browsing runs long. Independent and open seven days. The nursery trades 8am to 4pm daily; the cafe keeps shorter hours. Closed only on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

A Riverland plant shop on Industry Road in Renmark, opened in 2022, stocking plants, pots and landscaping supplies, with an order-online, next-day-pickup option and plant hire for events and businesses. A small independent nursery in the fruit-growing country of South Australia's Murray. Open Wednesday to Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday.

A family-owned garden centre on Spring Street in Toowoomba, up on the Darling Downs, pairing a working nursery with a big outdoor-living range. Alongside indoor and outdoor plants sit garden pots, potting mix and fertilisers, water features, statues, fire pits and outdoor furniture, plus home decor and an on-site cafe. Open 9am to 5pm every day bar the major public holidays.

Housed in a 1920s building on Longreach's Eagle Street, this outback emporium is modelled on the general stores that once supplied everything a pioneering family might need. The Kinnon family run it as a warren of rooms, robust leatherware and saddlery in one, Akubra-style hats and boots in another, then heritage-style homewares, toys, books and haberdashery. Much of the house range, sold under the Kinnon and Co label, is Australian designed or made where possible, a deliberate counter to mass-produced souvenirs. Part shop and part living museum of station life, it rewards a slow browse rather than a quick grab, and travellers passing through Central West Queensland's largest town treat it as a destination in itself. The stock leans practical and hard-wearing, the kind of gear a grazier might actually buy, which is precisely what gives a purchase here more meaning than another fridge magnet from the highway.

An award-winning garden centre on Boundary Road in Thornlands, in Brisbane's bayside Redlands. The plant benches run from perennials and shade-lovers to natives, succulents, fruit trees and edibles, and the centre claims the largest pot display in the Redlands, plus statues, birdbaths and water features. Mulches, fertilisers and pest control round out the shed. Open seven days.

A general bookshop in Geelong carrying a broad range across fiction, children's and picture story books, translated fiction, fantasy and romantasy, classics, cookbooks, gardening, and world history, with sections for Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ writing. Staff picks sit alongside new releases, and the shelves run to coastal and surf-themed titles among the wider stock.

A family-run garden centre on Hursley Road in Toowoomba, stocked for both the ornamental and the productive gardener. The benches carry native plants, roses, camellias and proteas alongside fruit trees, vegetable seedlings, herbs and bush foods, with potting mixes, mulch, fertilisers, tools and pond supplies to match. Local delivery runs across the Darling Downs. Open seven days.

This Perth eco and garden store stocks zero-waste essentials across home, cleaning, personal care and the garden, from natural cleaning refills and compostable bin liners to heirloom seeds, microgreens and composting supplies. Shelves also carry plastic-free kitchenware, insulated drink bottles and reusable bags, alongside workshops covering composting, permaculture and sustainable living. It operates as part of The Carlisle Collective, with a focus on local and ethical products for households looking to cut single-use plastic.

A corner shop on Lansdowne Crescent stocking the kind of things that earn their place on a windowsill: Haws watering cans, Marimekko pencil sets, ceramic sardine trinket dishes, handmade cloches. The Verde Studio line runs to wooden serving boards. Gift wrapping is free, packaging is recycled, and the locals clearly keep coming back.

Graphic designer Adele runs this Patrick Street shop from a narrow Tuesday-to-Saturday window. The stock mixes solid-state cologne, copper measuring sets, sheepskin slippers and denim kids' aprons — practical objects with enough personality to pass as gifts. Small price points (cards from $6.50) make it easy to leave with something.

A production nursery on the Olympic Highway at Wagga Wagga, selling direct to the public from tubestock right through to advanced trees. The range spans hedging and climbers, grasses and groundcovers, natives, conifers, shrubs and fruit trees, with locally grown vegetable and flower seedling punnets by the door. Prices reflect the grow-your-own scale of the place rather than a polished garden-centre markup.

A Warrandyte destination that runs a garden centre, a gift shop and a café side by side on Ringwood-Warrandyte Road. The nursery side carries natives, camellias, citrus and fruit trees, roses, hedging and indoor plants along with pots, tools and outdoor furniture, while the shop stretches to homewares, fragrance and jewellery. Open daily, café included.

On the Captain Cook Highway at Smithfield, north of Cairns, a nursery built around plants, pots and water features. The benches carry a broad plant range with hibiscus and tropical greenery, stacked pots and potting mixes, plant-health products and patio ponds for the backyard water garden. Open every day of the week.

A garden centre on Hynes Road at Waterloo, in the countryside east of Bunbury. Trees, potted colour, natives and garden supplies fill the yard, and the staff will pot up a plant for you on the spot. Pots and plant hire round out the range, and walk-in visitors are welcome to browse the benches.

Julie Willis runs this Sandy Bay shop from a Georgian terrace on Gregory Street — part homewares store, part interior design studio. Vintage finds sit alongside pillowcases, glassware and bottle openers; the studio work, as one client put it, is less renovation than translation — taking what's already in a home and making it legible.

A family nursery at Seven Mile Beach, east of Hobart, growing shrubs and trees for the Tasmanian garden since 1956. The retail yard carries native and exotic stock, advanced specimens down to smaller pots, with separate lines for retail and wholesale buyers and a price list on hand for browsing. Open Monday to Saturday.

A rare-plant nursery in the Macedon Ranges hamlet of Ashbourne, near Woodend, run as much for collectors as for everyday gardeners. The list runs to tuberous begonias, peonies, fuchsias, hydrangeas and hellebores alongside climbers, succulents, perennials, fruit and berries. Pre-ordered plants can be collected at the farm gate, and the nursery opens for Sunday retail through the warmer months, closing over winter.

A not-for-profit community nursery run by volunteers of the Wildflower Society of WA, now settled into a larger home at Madeley in Perth's north. Between two and three hundred West Australian native species are grown and sold here, gathered from across the state, and you don't need to know a thing about natives to be shown around. Open for sales Thursdays and Saturdays.

A cool-climate garden in the apple country of Bilpin, in the Blue Mountains, opened to visitors through spring and autumn. A small nursery sells plants propagated from the garden along with natives and seasonal colour, while the gift shop carries ornaments and homewares and the tearoom pours coffee over scones, cake and homemade apple pie. Dogs on leads are welcome, and you're free to bring a picnic.

Across Cedar Street from the Lake Eacham Hotel, this curated shop reads as a small gallery of the region's makers: North Queensland art on the walls, boutique and locally designed clothing on the racks, and shelves of gourmet produce, preserves and confectionery from Tablelands farms and kitchens. The premise is straightforward, gather the growers, artists and small producers of the tropical north under one roof and let the hampers and gift boxes do the exporting. It is the kind of provisioner a village leans on for a considered present or a picnic of local cheese, chocolate and cordial before a lake walk. Independent and single-site, it favours the artisan and the regional over the mass-produced, and doubles as a quiet directory of who is making what across the Tablelands, a useful first stop for a visitor working out the district's producers.

A family-run nursery on the Dandenongs' Monbulk Road at Silvan, going more than forty years and worth the drive up from Melbourne. The range runs deep on maples and weeping and upright willows, alongside Australian natives, ferns and a broad sweep of indoor and outdoor plants, with the pots and garden supplies to match. Open seven days.

Gail Rowley has run Canberra's only papercrafts shop from Gold Creek Cultural Village since 2000. The shelves run deep: Kaiser Craft, Graphic 45, Ranger, Darkroom Door, rubber stamps, dies, embossing folders, cutting machines. Workshops cover Copic markers, distress cards, scrapbooking, and more. Tuesday to Saturday, short hours — check before you go.

A Monbulk nursery on David Hill Rd in the Dandenong Ranges, built around rare and unusual plants: magnolias, maples, wisteria, conifers, climbers and native species, grown across grafted, cutting-raised and seedling stock in modern propagation houses. The range leans to the collectable and hard-to-source rather than the everyday. Open Monday to Friday, with shorter weekend hours; closed public holidays.

A Croatian shop at 309 High Street in Preston, stocking books, CDs, DVDs, magazines and crossword puzzles alongside gifts and traditional items. Books run from fiction and history to language dictionaries, cookbooks and prayer books, and the music shelves cover klape, dalmatinske, slavonske and other Croatian genres. Among the goods are hand-made licitar hearts, Croatian flags, embroidered patches, and decorative bottles including the 40ml cutura and the 50ml fraklec shot glass with cork top, some sold for weddings.