> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Four things for spring, all made here from what the country already has
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/spring-four-things/
- Published: 2026-09-12T07:03:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-12T07:03:38.000Z
- Description: Spring is here, and so are four things worth having on the bench or in the pantry: a trowel pressed from bottle caps, a nursery of the native plants our birds and insects depend on, native flavours for the pantry, and furniture that comes back to be made again.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Sustainable Living, All stories

Start with the trowel. Womby, made by Gardening on Country on Gunaikurnai Country in Bairnsdale, East Gippsland, is pressed from seventy five recycled bottle caps and was named Sustainable Garden Product of the Year at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show in April. Mitchell Skuta started the business three years ago with his wife Sarah and his mother Tammie after a family photo session on a beach strewn with plastic, and their Aboriginal owned company has now kept about one and a half million caps out of landfill, one tool at a time, with a share of sales going to Country Needs People, which backs Indigenous rangers. Then the plants. Bush to Bowl at Terrey Hills on Sydney's northern beaches is a First Nations owned nursery started by Adam Byrne, a Garigal man, and Clarence Bruinsma, a Yaegl man, in a corner of a primary school greenhouse. It grows the native plants that our birds, bees and other insects depend on, sunshine wattle among them, runs bushfood walks from Narrabeen to Warriewood that anyone can join, and has school students raising endangered seedlings to maturity.

For the pantry, Natif in Melbourne, founded by Julie Merlet, sells native fruits, herbs and spices, wattleseed and Kakadu plum, and has put more than one hundred and sixty thousand dollars into buying directly from First Nations growers and harvesters. And for the house, Defy in Botany, Sydney, sorts and shreds plastic waste in its own factory and presses it into panels for furniture, lighting and homewares, including the first cot in the world made entirely from recycled plastic. Every piece is stamped with its plastic type so that when its life is over it goes back to Defy, is shredded again and becomes the next thing. Not one of them is a gadget. They are four small businesses making useful things from what the country already has, and spring is the season to give them a go.

### Sources and links

Our short take: drawn from the Bairnsdale Advertiser (17 April 2026), Alec Smart for the Manly Observer, the National Indigenous Times (28 February 2025), Commonwealth Bank's Momentum coverage and each maker's own site. Reputations checked: Womby carries a 4.9 rating from 146 verified reviews; the other three are covered by the outlets above. No money changes hands for any mention. Photograph: Unsplash.

- [Gardening on Country](https://gardeningoncountry.com.au) The Womby trowel and the family behind it.
- [Bush to Bowl](https://bushtobowl.com/pages/about-us) The nursery at Terrey Hills and its walks.
- [Natif](https://natif.com.au) Native foods, with the growers named.
- [Defy](https://www.defydesign.org) Recycled plastic furniture, made in Botany.