A Day in the Garden with Nadine Brown

There are some places where home, work and the garden are so closely entwined that one seems to spill naturally into the next. Cedar Creek Homestead, on Dharawal Country in the NSW Southern Highlands, is one of them.

It is home to florist, educator and Sustainable Floristry Advocate Nadine Brown, who has spent more than 30 years working with flowers. Her career has taken her from formal floristry training to opening her first shop, Wildflower, at 23, then into weddings and events, motherhood and a 17-year teaching career. Today, all of those chapters come together through The Ivy Institute, where she teaches and mentors florists from an ivy-covered greenhouse on the property.

Nadine's connection with flowers began much earlier. One of Nadine’s first flower memories is sitting on her grandmother’s potting bench inside a glasshouse filled with orchids, thinking the flowers must be terribly special to have an entire house built just for them.

That sense of wonder has never really left.

From flowers to Cedar Creek

Nadine and her husband Rob bought Cedar Creek Homestead in 2001 and raised their two now-adult children there. Over the years, they have renovated the main homestead and gradually reworked old sheds and overlooked corners of the property into places with new purpose. Rob mills timber from fallen trees on the land to make gates, fencing, doors and furniture, while Nadine brings her eye for flowers, interiors and gathering spaces.

Today, the property is home to The Hut, an off-grid creekside stay, Jay Bird Cottage, a 1920s former saddle shed beside the harvest garden, and the soon-to-open Saddle Inn, once an old chicken shed and now a relaxed space overlooking the dam. Cedar Creek also offers horse adjustment and is beginning to host more intimate weddings and events, with Nadine’s flowers and styling naturally woven in. Each part of the property feels connected by the same idea: giving old spaces new life and sharing this corner of Dharawal Country with others.

And, of course, all of this means there is rarely such a thing as a single kind of day for Nadine. Her hours move between flowers, students, guests, seedlings, animals and the garden itself.

Starting with the sun

7:00 - 8:00am 

Nadine is very happily not a pre-dawn person.

After years of 3am flower-market mornings during her florist-shop days, she now prefers to wake when the sun does. With Rob moving towards retirement, they have begun to enjoy letting their days fall a little more closely into nature’s rhythm.

Mornings start with one of Rob’s lemon, ginger, turmeric and cayenne shots, followed by tea. Then Nadine heads down to the creek, her favourite part of the property, for what she calls her “meeting for one.”

Some mornings that might mean meditating beneath the gums. Others are spent journalling, sitting on a rock thinking, or simply being quiet long enough for an idea to appear.

It is often here, before emails and lists and the practical jobs of the day begin, that her clearest creative thoughts arrive.

Tea, lists and the first jobs of the day

8:00 - 9:00am

After breakfast together, Rob heads off to do his farm “things” and Nadine will often take a second cup of tea into the new glasshouse.

A notebook comes with her.

She loves a list, particularly when it gives a little order to what she describes as the occasional flurry of a creative brain.

There are seedlings to water and the first barely-there green shoots to inspect or, as Nadine calls them, the “bum fluff” of new growth.

Then the day starts to gather pace.

Picking flowers and heading to The Ivy Greenhouse

9:00 - 12:00pm 

Nadine likes to pick blooms early while they are still well hydrated, usually with new pup Shelby in tow, very cute, though apparently not yet particularly helpful.

The flowers may become part of an experiment, a social post, a YouTube video or something for The Ivy Institute’s Greenhouse membership library.

From there, Nadine heads down to The Ivy Greenhouse, the headquarters of The Ivy Institute.

The space began as a 100-year-old dark and dingy work shed before Nadine and Rob renovated it into the ivy-shrouded studio it is now. Filled with plants and Nadine’s collection of vintage vases and vessels, it is where she runs mentoring sessions, online masterclasses, in-person workshops and courses.

It is also where the less visible work of running an online business happens.

Through The Ivy Institute, Nadine works with florists at many different stages, from those just beginning to established designers and farmer-florists. Her work goes beyond floral technique. She helps florists think about the business behind the flowers: how they want to work, what they value and how to build something financially sustainable without losing the reason they were drawn to flowers in the first place.

This spring, The Ivy Greenhouse will also host workshops including Wedding Design & Business and Portraits in Bloom.

From flowers to fresh sheets

12:00 - 3:00pm 

By midday, Nadine’s attention often shifts from The Ivy Institute to Cedar Creek’s accommodation.

She will usually be turning over The Hut and Jay Bird Cottage washing sheets, cleaning and preparing everything for the next arrivals.

Some guests are visiting through Airbnb, while others have travelled interstate for one of Nadine’s workshops and stay on the property while they are there.

There is something quite fitting about it. A day spent learning amongst flowers in The Ivy Greenhouse might end with a walk back to a cottage beside the harvest garden, or a night tucked away in the off-grid Hut near the creek.

Workshops, garden and accommodation all belong to the same place rather than feeling like separate parts of it.

Golden hour

3:00 - 5:00pm

Late afternoon is Nadine’s favourite time of day, and she will find just about any excuse to be outside.

There might be watering or weeding to do, puppy playtime with Shelby, or simply a wander through the harvest garden to pick vegetables and herbs for dinner.

Eggs are collected. The garden is checked. The afternoon light settles across the property.

There is no particular ceremony to it.

It is simply that hour of the day when useful jobs become an excuse to stay outdoors a little longer.

Evenings by the ‘bush TV’

Many weekends, and the occasional weeknight, finish beside one of the fire pits around the property.

Nadine and Rob call it the “bush TV.”

They love a fire and have several spots for one around Cedar Creek because, in Nadine’s words, every veggie garden needs a fire pit.

A glass of wine, a little quiet and time spent watching the flames is their way of winding down.

It means the day often ends in much the same way it began: outside, close to the land, with no real need to rush anywhere.

A life built around nature

Flowers picked in the morning become teaching material. Old sheds become studios and guest cottages. Vegetables grown beside the accommodation find their way to the kitchen. Fallen timber becomes gates and tables. Visitors come for a workshop and stay to experience the property around it.

The Ivy Institute, Cedar Creek Homestead, Nadine’s floristry and the garden are all part of the same working life.

After more than 30 years with flowers, Nadine is still teaching, still making, still experimenting and still finding reasons to head outside when the light turns golden.

Perhaps that early memory in her grandmother’s glasshouse was right after all.

Some flowers really are special enough to build a whole life around.

If you love flowers, thoughtful spaces and stories of people who have built a life around the things they care about, you’ll want to follow Nadine.