Born into a family of passionate gardeners and designers, David fell in love with orchids at the age of ten, then moved on to propagating plants to sell at the family business. After completing an Associate Diploma in Horticulture at Burnley, he began a thirty year career in retail horticulture, including stints in garden centres in Ireland and New Zealand. Managing the garden division at Rivers of Yarrambat allows David to indulge his love of plants and a passion for customer service. He has also gained a Diploma in Business Frontline Management.

Rivers began as Plenty River Nurseries in 1981 and has established a reputation as a leading destination garden centre. Now a multi faceted retail & leisure business, it is run by the second generation of the Moad family. Over its thirty seven year history, Rivers has gone through many stages of evolution and is now known as Rivers of Yarrambat. The garden centre features a restaurant style café, complemented by a health & wellbeing centre, personal training gyms and a hair & beauty studio. 

David enjoys the challenges of retail and the constant evolution of our dynamic industry. He travels widely to gain knowledge and insight into how overseas operators are developing their businesses to keep pace with their changing markets.

Graham has worked as a nurseryman, arborist, greenkeeper, seedsman, local government Head Gardener & parks superintendent, and Head of Division of Horticulture NSW TAFE, Principal Ryde School of Horticulture (Ret).

He served 11 years as Honorary Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, appointed by Gov. Sir David Martin. Graham is only the fourth Australian to receive the Gold Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society (UK). He is the only person in the Southern Hemisphere to be awarded an Honorary Fellow of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Guild London, he was awarded the Electronic Laurel, Radio Laurel and Gold Laurel & Hall of Fame -Australian Horticultural Media Association. Award of Excellence - Australian Institute of Horticulture, Award of Excellence and Award of Merit also Allan Seale Award-Nursery & Garden Industry NSW, Award of Merit -Nursery & Garden Industry Australia. 

Graham has been a national broadcaster with Macquarie /Fairfax Radio since 1980 with The Garden Clinic Show, national television garden presenter with Channel 7 since 1980 and 25 years with Better Homes & Gardens TV. Host of Great Gardens of the World TV series.

Author of five books on gardening and horticulture in Australia and co-founder Garden Clinic.dot com.

Kent is a business management and marketing specialist. His skill set includes accounting and finance, human resources, advertising, marketing, travel operations and media buying. Kent established a division of Ross Garden Tours in London 2006-2014.

Kent is a professional football (soccer) referee. He also has extensive computer skills especially related to publishing. He is the publisher of the Garden Clinic Journal Magazine. Kent has travelled the world extensively all his life throughout Europe, North America, China and Australia.

• Referee, Football Association of England.
• Managing Director, Graham Ross Horticultural Consultants Pty Ltd
• Managing Director and Licensee, Ross Garden Tours International Pty Ltd
• Founder and Managing Director, Kent Ross Media Pty Ltd
• Diploma in Tourism Management, TAFE NSW

Kate is the daughter of a horticulturist, and has been surrounded by plants, gardens and landscapes all her life.  After studying Landscape Architecture, Kate felt her plant knowledge was lacking, so returned to TAFE to study horticulture.  Kate worked in domestic and commercial landscape design and construction for over 15 years, gradually gravitating more towards environmental management.  Kate taught at TAFE NSW, Ryde Campus, for 25 years, and now manages all delivery in Agribusiness for the Sydney Region.  Kate has continued to be actively  involved in gardens throughout her teaching career, running the community garden at Erskineville Public School, being a keen verge gardener, and maintaining involvement with the extensive grounds at Ryde.

John Mason graduated with a diploma from Burnley Horticultural College in 1971. Worked variously as gardener, landscaper, nurseryman, horticultural consultant, community playground designer, lecturer; and municipal parks superintendent. Editor/principal writer for 4 national garden magazines; author of 150 books. Organised garden pavilion for Royal Agricultural Show in Melbourne; Principal ACS Distance Education: 36 years – developed 600+ courses (200 horticulture –also agriculture, business, environment, tourism, health). E book publisher. 

John has more than 40 years of experience as a specialist horticulturist, designing and developing soil medium, indoor environments, green roofs and walls across Australia, Singapore and Qatar.  Continued and quite dedicated research into a board range of specialist horticultural issues has ensured John remains at the very peak of his professional network.  Long term responsibility for the capital and maintenance work on nearly 100 parks and gardens demonstrates his project management abilities.  His radio and television experience clearly show he can communicate well and is sought after for his opinions.

Employment Experiences: Colin Barlow is a horticulturist, landscape designer, tour guide, teacher and garden writer.   

Colin originally trained as an apprentice horticulturist in England. After completing his studies in the UK he became a Parks Supervisor before immigrating to Australia and working as a Parks Technical Officer and 2IC to the Manager of Parks. Colin furthered his studies in Australia by completing an Associate Diploma in Horticulture and a teaching degree.  He worked as Landscape Coordinator and lecturer at Challenger Institute of Technology for over 17 years.  

Colin is the Managing Director of his own landscape design and construction company, Gardens from Eden.  Colin hosts a weekly television gardening segment on ‘Home in WA’ with Channel 7 Perth, is the gardening writer and the local gardening expert on 98.5 Sonshine FM radio.  Colin has experience leading gardening tours through Europe and Western Australia for Ross Garden Tours and others.

Colin is a member of the following horticultural organisations AILDM, MAIH, RHS, HMAA, LIAWA and the AGHS

Having started in an advertising agency straight out of graduating from Edith Cowan University in Perth, before jetting off to play cricket in the UK for 2 years, Heath spent 8 years in the diverse world of aviation, before recapturing his love of marketing at Richgro. With little gardening experience, he discovered the wonderful world of plants in the past 6 years as National Marketing Manager for Richgro Garden Products. Heath believes unique opportunity exists now in this industry to capture a whole new audience and bring young people into gardening. He brings a vast knowledge of the retail gardening market, overseas trends and a love of the people within the industry. 

"When I saw the people who are representing the AGC I wanted to be able to contribute to the cause, and hopefully can bring my enthusiasm and skills to the council".

In my spare time he coaches his two eldest boys in soccer as well as being the junior co-ordinator of the soccer club and trying to play in the over 35’s. He also enjoy golf, riding and going fishing in my spare time with his 3 boys.

Trevor is a garden historian and heritage consultant with commissions and project experience in Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, California, Greece and Italy. He operates a solo consultancy for private garden owners. Trevor is also an internationally distributed author of 17 gardening books related to the above areas of expertise and have been contracted by publishing houses in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. 

From 1980 to 1990 he was the Education Manager ( Principal) of the School for Environment, Conservation & Horticulture for TAFE SA during which time he developed extensive industry and inter-governmental networks and working relationships, in particular those concerning educational training packages, national standards, programme auditing and evaluation, and the implementation of new national training packages for the emerging water industry, conservation and land management, pest and weed control, and new Diploma courses in garden design that were sold to international students. This qualification was articulated with the Bachelor’s Degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of Adelaide. His final initiative while at TAFE SA was as a Senior Project Manager tasked with developing new higher level skills qualifications for horticulture that would specialised skills areas at post- Diploma levels that would meet the needs of industry and institutions such as botanic gardens. During this appointment Trevor served on a committee led by Prof. Ian Blandy to develop a new commercial and domestic water-use policy and implementation strategy for the SA government. The outcome of the task force was the Water Industry Alliance, now headed up by Prof. Mike Young, Environment Institute, University of Adelaide.