The Authors

Andrew Cooper

Andrew, along with his wife Sharon, has owned & operated a highly successful production nursery in Queensland for the past ten years. As a leading supplier to major retail outlets and regular speaker to various garden clubs, Andrew enjoys sharing with people his knowledge of growing plants.

Born in Marulan, a small community in the Southern Highlands of NSW, Andrew has spent a lifetime living and working on family owned rural properties. His love for the land and his curiosity for how things grow has led to his deep knowledge of how Mother Nature likes to operate. Andrew’s passion saw him experience all aspects of agriculture, from commercial wool classing to commercial crop production; from exercising his midwifery skills on livestock to producing thousands of flowering plants for delight on Mothers Day and Christmas each year, Andrew has a large degree of knowledge when it comes to Mother Earth.

Starting a production nursery from scratch has been both challenging and rewarding. Every successful business has it’s ups and downs, but through education,determination and perseverance, anyone can succeed. Time in the nursery industry has seen Andrew & Sharon’s nursery win various awards including the prestigious gold medallion at ACB Gardening Australia Live in Brisbane and the National Horticulture Best Greenlife Display at the Nursery Industry Expo.

Andrew has travelled extensively both in Australia and overseas looking at various production nurseries and retail outlets and how they operate. On a recent trip to Canada, Andrew studied large scale tree production with a view to implementing the knowledge gained in his own nursery. “We all need plants & trees, whether for food, clean air, or just their natural beauty”.

After witnessing his father suffer not one but two near fatal heart attacks and loosing another family member to heart disease at a young age due to a genetic fault, Andrew decided he needed to take action and help those at risk of serious illness. His input into The Superfood Gardener is his way of educating people to the importance of plant nutrition and growing for health.

Living on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland with his wife Sharon, and their two very special children Mitchel and Sophie, Andrew enjoys motor bike riding, house renovating, travelling and relaxing with his family and friends.

Andrew is passionate about health, the environment and helping people understand the importance of growing food in their own backyard.

Sharon Cooper

Along with her husband Andrew, Sharon has a passion for growing plants. With continual studies in business and working in various industries such as accounting and hospitality over the past twenty years, Sharon has helped shape Forest Blooms Nursery into the success it is today.

Born in Nowra, on the south coast of NSW, and growing up in Goulburn, a country town on the Southern Highlands, Sharon was introduced to another way of life when she met & married Andrew in 1984. She discovered her passion for plants and watching Mother Nature at work. Four years after the birth of their first child Mitchel, Andrew and Sharon moved to Wagga Wagga to continue with different business opportunities and their rural way of life.

“But something kept niggling at me, how could we take Andrew’s broad agricultural and horticultural knowledge and my knowledge of business and create a business from scratch”. The challenge was just too tempting and in 1998 Andrew & Sharon decided to sell their property and move to a more temperate climate which enabled them to live their dream of working together with nature.

But it was not without their share of challenges. After the birth of their second child Sophie, Sharon had complications and suffered a stroke. I will never forget laying in the maternity ward, with our two week old baby by my side, and Andrew arriving at the hospital with signed contracts for the sale of our house, we were moving interstate to live our dream, at that point I could hardly walk to the bathroom, let alone make it all the way to Queensland!

With a strong determination and will to succeed, Sharon recovered her health and charged full steam into the nursery industry. Sharon has taken on many new challenges, least of all writing and publishing a gardening for health book, based on knowledge gained from operating a full scale production nursery.

We are only half way up the mountain, while ever we can help others to understand the importance of health and nature we will keep on climbing.

From being a mother, to writing a book, to helping run a plant nursery and along with Andrew, fully renovating Agapanthus Cottage, a sunshine coast hinterland farm stay accommodation for families offering a look at the rural way of life, due to open Autumn 2010, Sharon can’t be more excited about the future.