Fifty million plants later, the Yarralumla Nursery celebrated its 100th birthday on Sunday, with grandsons of two of the original nurserymen on hand for the event.
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Since 1930 the nursery has run Canberra's free-plant scheme for new homes, with about 10 million plants handed out over the years, other than a short hiatus under the Fraser government in the 1970s, nursery general manager David Doherty said.
Each year about 14,000 Canberrans receive about $220 of free plants when they build on a new block - and it must be new, not redeveloped.
The plants, though, have changed over the years. Mr Doherty said his parents were given a weeping willow for their front garden, a tree that effectively destroyed their plumbing five years later.
The first nurseryman at Yarralumla was Charles Weston, whose Melbourne-based grandson, water researcher professor John Langford, was in Canberra yesterday for the celebrations.
As Professor Langford looks at Canberra now he sees a city planted by his grandfather. He estimates Charles Weston was responsible for planting 2 million trees as he gave life to the developing capital.
Charles Weston began his career in England before emigrating first to Sydney, then to Canberra in 1913.
Until 1927 he was in charge of greening the city. For the first nine years his family remained in Sydney, and Professor Langford remembers how his mother, Winifred, described arriving by train in Queanbeyan, then travelling by stagecoach on a freezing Canberra day through a dozen rabbit-proof fences to get to her new home at Yarralumla.
Professor Langford is the only one of Charles Weston's four grandchildren still alive.
Yarralumla's third nurseryman, John Hobday, also began his career in England and, like Charles Weston moved first to Sydney, then to Canberra in 1913.
He married Elsie, who was born on a sheep station at Yarralumla, now the site of Government House, and the couple lived in what is now known as Hobday's Cottage in Weston Park.
The cottage was built in 1923 so a nurseryman could protect the fruit grown in the orchard from theft.
John Hobday died there in 1944; Elsie Hobday lived in the cottage until 1954. It is now used as a cafe.
As part of the centenary celebrations, Canberra artists have used old sheets of blotting paper once used to press flowers at the herbarium, for artworks, which were on display at the nursery on Sunday.
Territory and Municipal Services Minister Shane Rattenbury unveiled new heritage signs for the nursery and Hobday's Cottage.
