Our Story

At Ladysmith Park Perennials, our story is one of resilience, creativity, and a deep love for plants and place.

Before 2010, I (Brett) was a devoted home gardener on Sydney’s North Shore—Buxus hedges, a Scott Bonner mower, and an endless obsession with neatness and order. But in January that year, a swimming accident left me a quadriplegic and shifted the course of my life. Around the same time, my daughter Jacqui had begun her studies in Landscape Architecture at UNSW. Throughout her degree, we’d talk endlessly about the evolution of garden design—especially the emerging global movement towards naturalistic, ecological landscapes.

It was during these conversations that we discovered the New Perennial Movement and the inspiring work of pioneers like Piet Oudolf, Dan Pearson, Beth Chatto, Tom Stuart-Smith, and Noel Kingsbury. Their approach—wild yet intentional, textural, immersive, and deeply connected to place—felt like the future of gardening.

In 2016, I began searching for a farm where I could bring my dream garden to life, utilising the philosophies of these perennial movement pioneers. In February 2017, we found the perfect blank canvas in Ladysmith, in the NSW Riverina.

As the garden took shape, we established our own nursery to supply the large volume and specific varieties of perennials needed to bring the design to life. Today, the garden is complete, but our passion has only grown. Through our nursery and design services, we want to share this truly magnificent new approach to gardening with others across the Riverina, Victoria and Australia.

A Living Garden, A Working Nursery

As the garden evolved, so did our nursery. To meet the scale and specific palette of our design, we began growing our own perennials—focusing on hardy, climate-resilient varieties suited to our region. We collect seed from our own garden annually, and with each generation, our plants become more adapted to the extremes of the Riverina climate—heat, frost, drought, and all.

Our nursery is now at the heart of everything we do. It supports not only our own designs, but also supplies plants to other gardeners, designers, and landscape professionals across NSW and Victoria who share our vision of sustainable, resilient beauty.

Sustainability at Our Core

At Ladysmith Park Perennials, sustainability isn’t an add-on—it’s embedded in every layer of our practice.

We reuse materials wherever possible—reclaiming bricks, concrete, pots, and other salvaged elements from our site and local waste management centres for paving, edging, and garden structures.
We collaborate with local contractors and suppliers to minimise our environmental impact and support regional economic growth.
We design with native and climate-resilient perennial species, ensuring that our gardens are not only beautiful but also enduring, low-maintenance, and biodiversity-supporting. Every planting palette is chosen to attract and support local birds, bees, and beneficial insects, fostering a healthy and interconnected ecosystem.
We practice seed-saving and propagation to ensure genetic resilience and reduce reliance on imported nursery stock.

These choices reflect the evolving values of modern landscape architecture—working in symbiosis with the surrounding environment to create gardens that restore, rather than consume.

Meet the Team

Brett Stevenson

Gardening Enthusiast and Ideas Man
A self-professed gardening aficionado, Brett was inspired to leave behind his formal gardening ways and join the new perennial movement with his daughter Jacqui. Originally from the Central West, Brett runs a national Grain Marketing business from his new (flower-filled) post in the Riverina.
Jacqui Stevenson

Landscape Architect and Perennial Lover
Jacqui’s biggest inspiration is Horticulturalist and Landscape Architect Piet Oudolf. He inspires her to create organic and naturalistic landscape designs suited to the Australian climate. Her goal is to encourage people to spend more time outdoors in their gardens watching them evolve and change with the seasons. Jacqui discovered a lack of supply of the perennial species required, in particular those with genetic moderation to the Riverina region. This inspired her to create a nursery to provide garden enthusiasts in the Riverina and Victoria with these amazing plant species.
Lyn Percival

Nursery and Propagation Manager and Steve Irwin of Gardening
Lyn, our Nursery Manager, has worked in a variety of beautiful, large scale country gardens over the last 20 years in the Riverina. Lyn looks after our nursery and our showpiece garden, ensuring that all the species we grow are suited to the sometimes harsh conditions of the region.
Madeline Menzies

LPP Head Honcho
Originally from a little Central Western town called Nyngan, Maddie left the Sydney seaside to move to Wagga at the beginning of 2020. It was here that she met Jacqui, and like all great friendships, it was born out of a shared fence and a shared passion for kitchen gardening (not to mention some healthy garden competition). Over the years Maddie has dabbled in Landscape Architecture and Interior Design and has recently completed her Certificate III in Conservation and Ecosystem Management. As a lover of colour, beauty and seamless design, the atmospheric gardens of the perennial movement offer endless inspiration.

As Seen In

Ladysmith Park Perennials takes centre stage in the pages of Graziher Magazine’s Winter 2022 Issue #27.

Within the article, Graziher Magazine beautifully captures the essence of our very own landscape garden project and the journey that led to this remarkable chapter in our story.

Check us out in Gardening Australia too, with a segment focusing on how it all came to be with Brett and Jacqui.