Rodney's of "picturesque Pialligo" is celebrating its 50th birthday, the family-run nursery business surviving and thriving in the face of drought, COVID lockdowns and Canberrans' fading passion for a luxurious lawn.
The nursery and garden centre remains a family-run operation, started by Cheryl and Rodney Toll in 1974 and now run by their children - with occasional enthusiastic help from their grandchildren.
The business has evolved over the decades. Nearly 30 years ago the family put in a cafe - a first for an Australian nursery - and it remains a favourite catch-up spot for Canberrans. The Tolls also added a popular retail space that helped to galvanise the business.
But at the heart of it all has been the people - the family, the staff and the customers.
"It's been a love affair for Rodney and I all these years," Cheryl Toll said.
"It's not work to us as such. We enjoy the customers. We enjoy growing the place and putting more into it and making it better and better. That's been one of the nicest achievements.
"Now we have generations of customers who come."
The family has a week of 50th birthday celebrations starting on Saturday and Sunday, with street food, family entertainment and kids' activities. Kristen and Nige from MIX 106.3 are also broadcasting live from Rodney's on Saturday from 10am to 1pm.
The celebrations are the culmination of 50 years of hard work.
Rodney and Cheryl opened the nursery in a paddock in Pialligo on July 24, 1974, also moving into the house next door.
"It was a bit like being a farmer. You walk out the back door and go to work," Mr Toll, 75, said.
The couple remained in the home next door until six years ago when they moved to the Kingston Foreshore. Daughter Emma Toll and son-in-law Nathan Kleinig, who run The Kitchen Garden cafe at Rodney's, now live in the family home in Pialligo.
"Our kids run around like we used to do when we were little," Emma said.
Mr Toll, who was born in Lismore and moved to Canberra aged 14, did a horticulture apprenticeship with the government before moving into his own landscaping and maintenance business with a partner and then opening the nursery.
The business started small, initially with just one modest building at the front.
"The property was bare except for an apple orchard and we developed from there," he said.
The business has diversified over the years but remained within the original one-hectare footprint, Mr Toll keen to be better, not bigger.
"It's a very big job to maintain it all," he said.
The nursery's plants were originally watered by a bore, but the property now uses town water.
Mrs Toll, 72, who was born in Canberra, and Mr Toll met on a South Coast beach as teenagers when they were each holidaying with their families.
"I think I was 14 and decided I was going to marry Rodney at that stage," she said, with a laugh.
"By 19, we were married."
They have four children - son Jamie is an artist in New York and daughters Fiona, Belinda and Emma all work at the nursery.
The Tolls also have 12 grandchildren. They also pitch in, pricing items and keeping the water stations topped up.
After starting with weekend Devonshire teas, the family opened The Kitchen Garden cafe in the heart of the nursery in 1996. It has been run for the last 16 years by the Tolls' middle daughter, Emma, and her husband Nathan Kleinig (who also has a botanical bent - his father David Kleinig is one of Australia's foremost experts on eucalyptus.)
There are 40 people working in the cafe and 30 staff in the nursery.
"The family's obviously been involved but we've had very good staff members over the years and they have made a difference to the place," Mr Toll said.
Fiona Toll said her parents "always pushed the boundaries" of the business.
"They've always had amazing ideas and visited a lot of nurseries overseas and all over the place and come back with lots of ideas we could do," she said.
A humble Mr Toll said reaching 50 years is "I guess an achievement".
"You don't think about it that much. The years just roll on - 20 years, 30 years, 40 years," he said.
"It's just part of life because we live it every day, basically."
And the television advertisements, which started in the 1980s, with the famous tagline "Rodney's of picturesque Pialligo", continue to remain in the consciousness of Canberrans, even thought they haven't been on air for a number of years.
Now called Rodney's PlantsPlus, the business has survived droughts, the pandemic lockdowns and Canberrans falling out of love with their lawns.
During the pandemic, the family pivoted to an online operation and click-and-collect business.
And they've kept up with trends - indoor plants are popular at the moment, but traditional gardens still have their fans.
Mr Toll said the Millennium Drought (2001-09) killed off a lot of Canberrans' desire to have a lawn.
"People were proud of their lawns but when we had the Millennium Drought, people lost interest in their lawns. It was too much to keep them up. And that has never really come back," he said.
"Part of that reason, obviously, is that gardens have got smaller, plots of land have got smaller, houses have got bigger."
Mr Toll said someone once described walking through the unassuming entry to the nursery centre as going through the wardrobe to Narnia. He loves that description. And loves keeping people surprised and delighted.
"It's very satisfying to be able to walk through the place and just see what we have here," he said.
"Again, a lot of the credit for that is our staff. It's a very relaxing way for people to enter a garden centre and walk about the plants. We used to hear about doctors who'd come out here to take a breather and just walk through the plants just to relax."
"The love affair continues," Mrs Toll said.
The full list of 50th birthday celebrations at Rodney's is here.
