About Us
Native plant specialists of the NSW Far North Coast
Firewheel Rainforest Nursery has been providing specialist native plants on the Far North Coast of New South Wales for over 35 years.
Our nursery has grown from its beginnings in local habitat restoration into a large-scale vegetation management and advice service producing over 150,000 plants across more than 350 species every year.
We are a major supplier of rainforest, woodland, heath and wetland plants for restoration projects, as well as cabinet timber, bush food, flowering plant and grass species for gardens and landscaping.
From friendly advice at the nursery to managing major projects for government and industry partners, we’re passionate about helping restore native ecosystems and designing planting projects.
Supporting the regen community
Our team are leaders in the regeneration field, with restoration and landscaping experience from local, interstate and international projects. We work closely with local council and state government authorities, as well as landowners, community groups, business and industry to design, implement and maintain major revegetation projects in Byron, Ballina, Lismore and the Tweed.
In 2020, our Founder Mark Dunphy and his colleagues worked with the CSIRO to publish Australian Rainforest Seeds – a guide to collecting and propagating the seeds of 300 subtropical rainforest species. Drawing from the team's four decades working to restore the Big Scrub and other rainforest ecosystems, this resource has become the country’s definitive guide for subtropical rainforest seed propagation.
We’re proud to be a part of the Far North Coast’s ecological restoration movement and partner on leading projects in the field, including Big Scrub Rainforest Conservancy’s and Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney’s Science Saving Rainforests Project. We also grow a wide range of threatened species, like the Nightcap Oak, for the NSW Government’s Saving our Species Unit and the NPWS.
Restoration Projects
We're proud to have been involved in many of the Far North Coast's ecological restoration efforts, working alongside government, business and community organisations across the Tweed, Byron, Ballina and Lismore.
Jephcotts Restoration Project
Before: A closeup of the dam following its construction. After: The dam is now fertile and brimming with life.
Things are looking up at Jephcotts, where damaged farmland has been restored into healthy native rainforest. Mark and team have been planting and regenerating native forests on the site for half a lifetime. The progress demonstrates that with time and care, we CAN heal degraded land.