Primal Fruits

Cyrus Roussilhes runs this Parkwood nursery as something closer to a living archive than a garden centre — a dense, sprawling collection of fruiting, edible and medicinal plants gathered from far beyond the usual Perth range. Visits are by appointment, and reviewers describe wandering through jaboticaba varieties, chocolate and mamey sapote, Spanish limes, wood apples and casabanana vines, alongside oddities like Malabar chestnut and longevity spinach — the kind of stock that suggests decades of seed-hunting and grafting rather than a standard nursery order sheet. Cyrus himself seems to be the drawcard as much as the plants: guests repeatedly mention his encyclopaedic knowledge and willingness to talk through what actually thrives in Perth's sandy, dry conditions, and he's apparently written a book and appeared on Gardening Australia discussing his fruit obsession. There's a native strand too — Tasmanian mountain pepper, geebung, WA sandalwood — sitting comfortably next to tropical rarities, which says something about the breadth of his interests. It reads less like a retail operation and more like an enthusiast's collection that happens to sell cuttings and tubestock, appointment by appointment, to Perth growers hunting for something they won't find at the local hardware chain.