Surrey Hills

Since 1985 this Surrey Hills nursery has paired healthy, hardy plants with friendly guidance from qualified horticulturists, alongside a gift shop stocked with garden tools, ceramic pots, candles and homewares. The attached Oaks Café, open since 1996, serves breakfast, lunch and coffee within the nursery grounds, making it an easy spot to linger over seasonal advice from the monthly Tony's Tips blog. Open seven days, it remains a genuine local fixture for gardeners and gift-seekers alike.

The Purvis name has been on Melbourne shopfronts since the 1880s, when the family ran general stores across the city and Gippsland under the line 'Purvis for Service.' This Whitehorse Road shop, opened in 2001, carries that history into wine and beer: more than 1,200 wines and 1,600 beers on the shelves, plus a members' program, Purvis Direct, that sources another thousand-odd wines straight from small producers who don't otherwise reach retail. The range leans toward growers the owner has dealt with for years rather than whatever a distributor is pushing that month. A second, beer-focused outpost has since opened on Bridge Road in Richmond. Open seven days with long evening hours, it draws serious collectors as much as locals after a Friday-night six-pack — the kind of shop where the person behind the counter actually knows what's in the cool room.