Nurseryperson
What the work is
Propagates and cultivates trees, shrubs and ornamental and flowering plants in a plant or forestry nursery.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Prepares soil, fertiliser mixes and containers for planting
- Selects and plants seeds, bulbs and cuttings in beds, containers or trays
- Buds and grafts vegetative material onto rootstock
- Monitors, waters and fertilises plants to ensure their water and nutritional requirements are met
- Applies pesticides and appropriate treatments to control pests, diseases, weeds, and nutritional and environmental plant disorders
- Keeps records of soil mixtures, plantings, treatments, losses and yields
- Advises customers on plant selection and care
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a wholesale and retail plant nursery with greenhouses, shade houses and rows of potted trees in a fictional hills town. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A tray of cuttings you took in autumn is now a bench of healthy young plants
- A customer leaves with the right plant for their tricky shady corner
- Early morning in the greenhouse, damp and green, with the radio on low
Hard days
- A heatwave dries out the shade house and you spend the day watering and checking
- A pest spreads through one bench and you have to decide what to do with a whole crop
- Repotting hundreds of plants in a row when your back wants to stop
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 342931, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.