About
Hi, I’m Elle — the gardener behind Brancho.
For around 30 years, gardening has been a big part of my life — on farms, in nurseries and now across the many gardens around our Queensland property. They’re productive, a little chaotic, and full of food, flowers, wildlife and useful plants.
I spent around 15 years running a specialist nursery, trained in permaculture, and have never really stopped learning about plants, soil, wildlife and the thousand little relationships that make a garden work.
Brancho grew out of that obsession. It’s a place to share what I’ve learned, make Australian gardening information easier to use, and help more people grow interesting, useful, beautiful things — whether they have a few pots or a whole paddock to play with.
- 30 years growing
- Farm, nursery and home gardens
- 15 years nursery experience
- Specialising in edible and tropical plants
- 21 years gardening in Australia
- From dry inland gardens to humid tropical Queensland
- 20+ features, quotes and bylines
- Including The Washington Post, Homes & Gardens and Mother Earth News
How I got here
I grew up on a farm in the Netherlands, where growing things was simply part of life. Since then I’ve gardened, worked and learned on organic and biodynamic farms in Europe and Australia, spent about 15 years running a specialist nursery in Queensland, and somehow accumulated more plants than any sensible person needs.
Permaculture gave me a much deeper way of thinking about gardens: less about controlling every little thing, and more about paying attention to natural systems, creating useful relationships and giving nature more room to do what it already does brilliantly.
I love useful plants — although my definition of useful is pretty broad.
A plant might feed us, shade another plant, shelter wildlife, bring in pollinators, protect the soil, add organic matter, improve fertility, provide medicine, cool the garden or simply create a place where something else can thrive. Usually, the more jobs it does, the more I like it.
And underneath all of it is soil. Healthy, living soil changes everything: how well plants grow, how much water a garden holds, how resilient it is and how much life it can support. It’s one of the reasons I’m so interested in permaculture, regenerative growing and, next, syntropic gardening.
For me, a great garden isn’t just productive. It’s full of life.
Birds in the trees, insects in the flowers, roots through healthy soil, food for us, habitat for everything else — with all of those pieces supporting each other.
What I bring to Brancho
Permaculture
Permaculture has become a big part of the way I garden and think. It has pushed me to look beyond individual plants and think more about soil, water, wildlife, people and how a garden can become more resilient and generous over time.
I’ve completed my Permaculture Design Certificate and I’m now training to become a permaculture teacher through Morag Gamble’s Permaculture Education Institute.
Fifteen years in a nursery
I spent around 15 years running a specialist nursery in Queensland, growing and selling edible and tropical plants and helping people work out what would grow well for them.
Farms, gardens and a lot of plants
I’ve worked on organic and biodynamic farms in Spain, Germany and Australia, grown in dry inland Queensland and the humid tropics, and gardened everywhere from productive veggie patches to orchards and food forests.
But I’m not only interested in edible plants. Give me fruit trees, medicinal herbs, natives, groundcovers, habitat plants, nitrogen fixers, flowers buzzing with insects, strange perennial vegetables or a tree that creates the perfect patch of shade underneath it. Plants are brilliant.
Gardening with wildlife
I garden for more than us. Birds, frogs, bees, butterflies, beetles, lizards, spiders, worms and every other creature that finds its way into the garden all have a place in it.
I’m especially interested in building habitat into productive gardens — connecting wildlife corridors, planting for birds and insects, sharing food where we can, and making the farm richer for the things that already live here.
That interest runs through both my garden and my learning, including habitat gardening for birds and nature-based approaches to healthier landscapes.
Always learning
The more I learn about gardens, the more there is to learn.
- Permaculture Design Certificate
- Permaculture Teacher Certificate — in progress
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Organic Vegetable Gardening
- Home Mushroom Cultivation
- Herbal Medicine & Naturopathy
- Habitat Gardening for Birds
- Nature-Based Solutions
- Syntropic Gardening — next
Featured, quoted & published
- The Washington Post
- Homes & Gardens
- Realtor.com
- Bob Vila
- Mother Earth News
Say hello
Questions, corrections, unusual plants, garden stories — I’m always happy to hear from other gardeners.
Contact Brancho