About the Developer

In 1960, 11 year old nature lover Ralph Hogan was uprooted from ultra conservative boarding school in frostbitten southern NSW and sent to do a year’s French school in chaotic, colourful New Caledonia.

The transplant from cold Bowral to vibrant, tropical Noumea couldn’t have been more dramatic or more formative for the young nature lover and launched an all consuming passion with botany and the sea. 30 years before environmentalism became the mantra of social awareness, 12 year old Ralph began replanting coconuts and sandal wood on cyclone ravaged atolls and propagating rare rainforest trees from seed.

Ralph remembers being changed forever when he was returned to Sydney and Australia’s premier Rugby Union school, St Josephs College, Hunters Hill.

“I lived in a fantasy world for 7 years, I’m sure the other kids thought I was weird. I love the outdoors and being active but had no interest in the school’s academic or cultural ethos. Sport meant nothing to me. I dreamed of the day I would return to the tropics. I remember being far more upset seeing huge old camphor laurels cut down for a new accommodation wing than us losing the premiership.”

Ralph’s love of plants has carried through to his adult years, with the development of Botanica Waterfront, a 20 lot garden suburb that will feature massive plantings of both endemic and exotic plants, including 200 mature triangle palms that will line the 2 km lead in road to create the effect of a grande boulevarde.

“Botanica’s by-laws protect our native species but at the same time celebrate the diversity of tropical plants now available in Queensland. We believe that landscaped areas and gardens should be places of calm beauty and a reflection of an individual’s creativity, fantasy and taste. So although Botanica’s by-laws protect forever 80% of the total land area: some 90 acres of monsoonal vine thicket and particularly rich in bottle trees, Mackay cedars, leopard wood, Burdekin plums and Tulip Oaks, what people grown on their own lot is their own business.”

Lot owners will be encouraged to build not only fabulous homes to reflect their unique waterfront views but also develop gardens by being given access to a huge range of cost price tropical exotics and natives through Ralph’s 10 acre nursery in Cannonvale. Rumrock Tropical Flower Farm is today home to one of the biggest collections of heliconias and gingers in Australia.

“We probably have more exotic and unusual plants than most botanical gardens. Everything from endangered Madagascan caudeforms to boabs and rare cacti. We propogate over a hundred species of palms, many rare aroids and native trees. We also know every commercial supplier in the country and can source almost any species at wholesale prices.”