Member Profile: Robert Wilson aka The Mountain Man

Robert Wilson recently celebrated his second year in his Mountain Man Nursery and 10 years in the industry. Chantal De Vere caught up with Robert at the nursery.

Robert was born in Brisbane at a time when the Brisbane suburb of Eight Mile Plains was still farming lands. It was here his grandfather had a cut flower production nursery. I asked Robert was that his motivation for becoming a horticulturist. While he admits nurseries are his blood, he says it was happenstance. After studying a science degree, he fell into a job as a laboratory technician doing tissue culture. The nursery sent him to Bogor in Indonesia to do more work with tissue culture and so it was a beginning of his career. His role was expanded and he learned pest management response for the nursery.

In 2011 he studied at Grovely TAFE in Brisbane and was a top student. Now Robert is a successful ‘Craft Gardener’ and as well as nursery and environmental work also works with fruit and vegetables (see his blog ‘Growing Tomatoes in Brisbane’ . His nursery is full of plants that are not common in culture. Robert’s future goals are to do more garden design, consultations and propagation.

Why is he called Mountain Man? Robert performed his Diploma in taxonomy and classification of subtropical native rainforest plants on Mount Glorious and developed a love for mountain plants. The name has stuck!