Every Tom, Dick and Harriet have suddenly found their green thumbs, and garden centre staff have been run off their feet.

"It's really exciting, but it's been exhausting keeping up with demand," Pelicans Landing Garden Centre's Lyndl Barrett said.

"I'm lucky I've got Jeff and some really great staff supporting me."

But Lyndl is a blooming wonder, because in the middle of this business boom, she's also committed herself to helping reinvigorate the main street gardens of Nambucca Heads.

She's up at 5am before the nursery opens, and before traffic becomes an issue, plotting out the 19 beds that line Bowra Street.

"The Chamber of Commerce approached me at the beginning of the year and asked me to be a part of beautifying the town centre," she said.

"And I was motivated by the desire to give back to the community that's supported us for over a decade.

Lyndl teamed up with the chamber and council's Matt Leibrandt, Tim Woodward and the Greenspace team to tackle the project cooperatively.

"And those guys have been great - everything has really flowed and they've been receptive to all my ideas," she said.

Lyndl knew she needed to design the gardens with hardy, low-maintenance, drought-tolerant, and long-life plants for them to be successful and sustainable.

And she was keen to include a strong design element through the mass planting by considering colour, texture, layers, and introducing eye-leading patterns.

The council boys were also keen to stick to natives for the brief, in keeping with their ethos and previous work around the valley.

"We worked together to honour the desire for natives, but also allowing for a bit of diversity, as long as nothing we planted was invasive," Lyndl said.

"So for instance, I decided on some beautiful clumping bromeliads which will add a bright red element."

But it wasn't until the team started to dig a little deeper that they realised the extent of the challenge they were up against.

"The first huge issue was the soil condition," Lyndl said.

"All the beds are built on the existing road, so some of them have less than a ruler's depth. There was very little soil, and a lot of rubble. I said to the boys - if I'm going to have my signature on this, the soil needs to be good.

"And there was geofabric inhibiting the root development of the tuckeroos, because it hadn't been split to allow the roots to penetrate."

So the Greenspace team set about stripping the garden beds, and then creating a lasagne of mushroom compost and TerraCottem - a soil conditioner with water crystals and a complex nutrient-based fertiliser which Lyndl said is usually used to help grow wheat in the desert.

The lasagne was topped with a thick aged mulch.

"And it was mounded to give more depth and hope. Now the plants have the best chance they've ever had of successful growth," Lyndl said.

The team is keeping many of the existing plants, including the pandanus near the Golden Sands crossing, and the gazanias near the Catholic Church.

And yes, even some of the pigface is staying.

"Pigface is a great living mulch. The downside, and why people love to hate it so much, is it's been used as a feature rather than an understory," Lyndl said.

"The young pandanus can look a little scrappy, but Manus (Noble) has sculpted them to make them more architectural."

And Lyndl will weave her creative magic to enhance the existing plants with a mix of native grasses, and low shrubs and ground covers like zieria prostrata 'Carpet Star' (indigenous to the Sawtell Headland), grevillea lanigera 'Mt Tamboritha' and native pelargoniums, which are great at root binding to provide support in shallow depths.

Lyndl has "danced with wholesalers" to source the more-affordable tubestock for the project, "but it was hard work to do that during the manic buying frenzy of lockdown".

She said the delays caused by COVID have actually been beneficial because it's meant the plants are going into the ground at a good time to encourage root development before the onset of the brutal summer heat.

The top half of town has already been planted out, with the bottom half to be worked on shortly.

And Lyndl said the public can look forward to seeing "substantial progress" in plant growth by the end of spring.

"And within three months the design elements should reveal themselves."

So far the public reception has been very positive, and there has only been one isolated incident of vandalism.

"People are seeing the efforts that are being made and are respecting them," she said.

The project has been taxing, but it's also been a labour of love. And Lyndl has nothing but respect for the council lads who have worked so diligently to bring to life her design and the chamber's vision.

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