About Chris and Maries Plant World
The History of Hello Hello!
In 1995 Chris Lucas and Bill Peeters paired up to create a small one acre plant nursery on an old junky site in Emerald Victoria. They named their nursery Wandin Gully Tree Farm. Wandin Gully Tree Farm employed locals and stocked a small range of roses, shrubs and trees. Chris had been involved in horticulture for most of his life and previous to Wandin Gully Tree Farm had successfully run a farm tree mail order business and a tissue culture business which he further developed in the United States, Chris employed Bill in his farm tree business as his buyer.
Chris had written and published a book on Paulownias & Tagasaste and together with his wife Marie wrote and published an annual newspaper called The Farm Tree News which went out to around 100,000 farmers and they sold up to half and million trees per year. . Chris has an incredible passion for plants and has a real love for showcasing and marketing plants. Chris completed many fun and interesting photo and marketing projects for plants such as Gunnera mannicata 'The Giant Amazon Perennial' and Paulownia kawakami 'The Sapphire Dragon Tree'.
Chris and Bill were unknown in the retail plant marketplace and employed the services of Maurie Fields to voice their radio commercials. A year or two after opening they changed their name to 'Wombat Gully Plant Farm' and Chris used catch phrases such as 'Check out the wombats out the front mate', 'Get bare rooted' and 'Hook on the trailer, bolt on the roof racks' in their advertising.
In 1997 the business had a huge backlog of stock and was struggling. Chris and Marie were invited to a business seminar hosted by ARN in Hong Kong and from this seminar Chris developed 'Hello Hello' and three rules which he used in all his radio and television advertising, which are to 1. Concentrate your firepower 2. Ground your offer in reality 3. Have a clear & consistent message. By using these ideas this put the business on the map!
In 2000 Chris & Bill decided to go their separate ways. Bill continued to own and operate Wombat Gully Plant Farm in Hoppers Crossing & Geelong and Chris continued to operate Wombat Gully Plant Farm in Emerald. To differentiate the businesses Chris developed the trading name 'Chris & Maries Plant Farms' seeing the introduction of Marie in the television and radio ads. Marie had studied dance and singing for many years and brought a fresh lively approach to the ads.
Bill later sold his nurseries and moved up north with his wife Wendy.
Over the last few years Chris together with his team have worked really hard and now own and operate four retail stores Carrum Downs, Campbellfield, Traralgon, & Bendigo and have developed some of the most popular plant promotions which have become household names such as Neighbours-Be-Gone® Trees, Silver Stirling™ Pittosporum & Aussie Outdoor Palms, to name just a few.
The vision for Hello Hello is to build a national chain of family owned plant nurseries which could compete very successfully with the big chain stores, which have essentially been taking over the nursery business in Australia. In the last few years we have brought out our own range of potting & planting mixes and fertilisers called Devotion, commenced importing hardware products from china and built up our buying power, our own plant production resources and built a substantial fleet for trucking plants. We intend to create the first nursery chain stores in Australia that can genuinely complete on price across a broad range of products against the big chain stores whilst providing good service and gardening advice.