David Bearlin MSc, MEd, a psychologist, bought his first Clivia seeds (orange miniata) from a Florida nursery in 1973, and
he gradually built up a number of orange strains, and a yellow (Aurea bought in the 1980s) in his backyard in Burwood,
a Melbourne suburb.
In 1994, he retired from university teaching, and established Burwood Nursery (present business name: Burwood
Clivia Nursery), to import some of the most important Clivia cultivars which, at that time, were not in Australia.
The main purpose of this nursery has never been mainly to make a profit, but rather to popularise in Australia the
growing of the world's best Clivias.
'Vico yellow' and the variegates 'Fukurin' and 'Akebono' were imported from Yoshikazu Nakamura in Japan:
  
'Vico Yellow', 'Fukurin' and 'Akebono'
'Belgium Hybrids' from Pierre de Coster in Belgium, and 'Chubbs Peach' from Sean Chubb in South Africa
were also landed:
 
'Belgium Hybrid' and 'Chubbs Peach'
At this time, one example of everything imported was donated to the Royal Melbourne Botanic Gardens in Melbourne.
Today this forms the basis of a valuable collection.
The Sale of Seedlings
By the year 2000, it was realised that the importing of plants was then not practicable. At that time, the $A was
low, so that overseas plants were expensive. This, together with freight, customs and quarantine costs, and even with a
very minimal profit margin, meant that the landed plants were too expensive for the average Australian buyer.
Since that time the nursery purchases have been almost completely restricted to seed and to the sale of 1 year old seedlings. Not all of the 'Vico Yellow' plants were sold and the remainder have been retained as a continuing source of offsets and seed.
In the Melbourne suburb of Burwood, David was restricted in the number of seedlings which could be grown by the
size of the backyard of his quarter acre block. In June 2002, he moved to Pambula on the far south coast of New South
Wales. He now has two acres overlooking Pambula Lake, and he has built four shadehouses.
Over the twelve years of its existence, the nursery has in fact shown an overall loss. This situation is being turned
around by the move to Pambula.
 
The Main Shadehouse and one of the Igloo Shadehouse
This virtually unlimited space has now enabled him to offer annually over 70 different varieties of seedling Clivias,
and in sufficient number so that customers are not disappointed by a popular line selling out.
On a world scale, the number and type of Clivia cultivars continues to increase.
It is mainly for this reason that this website was created: to enable customers to see images of these "parent" flowers as
supplied by the breeders of the seed.
The Clivia garden at Pambula
We in Australia are apt to take for granted that our mild winter climate enables us to grow Clivias permanently
outdoors. This of course also applies to South Africa, New Zealand and to a limited extent, California. In the rest
of the US and Europe, and certainly in Japan and China, winter heating is a big problem.
Since moving to Pambula, David has had the space to greatly increase the number of seedlings in his private collection.
The first of these flowered in 2005.
The Clivia Garden in February 2005 (above), and June 2006(below)
A small corner of the block has not been cleared. There is still one original bloodwood eucalypt (over 30 metres) and
about 10 regrowth bloodwoods (up to 15 metres) on a nice slope. In 2004, with help, six
stone retaining walls were built on the contour: each about 30 metres long and up to 70cm high. The existing soil was dug out and
replaced with a mixture of top soil, pine bark and compost.
There are a number of advanced deciduous trees: 4 types of maple, a Chinese tallow wood and a (native) dogwood.
The terraces are presently planted with over 200 flowering sized Clivias, a number of tree ferns (for shade): 4 (native) Dicksonias and 9 Cyanthea cooperi
(which are now starting
to move). Also C. robusta, New Guinea Highland lace, Brazilian, etc. Also red and white waratahs, tree peonies, miniature
palms, gardenias, correas, over 50 small ferns, 40 different types of bromeliads, 50 or so epiphytic native dendronbium orchids and a row of different heucheras
and neapolitan cyclamens.
A 10% discount is given to members of the Clivia Society and the Toowoomba Clivia Society at all times.
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