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The Team

Home/About/The Team

Overview

GardensOnLine first went live in March 2000 - which places us amongst the pioneers of Garden e-commerce.

Over the years the content has grown so that today the Garden Shop offers thousands of products for sale and the Plantfinder database contains over 3,000 detailed profiles of popular garden plants and other plants of interest. Other resources include magazine style articles, garden glossary, activity calendars, garden doctor, product reviews and "How-To’‘s" in text and video along with the ever burgeoning Gardens of the World for inspiration to all gardeners.

It’’s all about making the activities of researching, shopping and gardening easier by putting everything you need in one place.

Millions of people from around the world visit GardensOnLine every year. Garden information is timeless and relevant wherever you live and although we are based in Australia we welcome our visitors from Argentina to Zaire, Iran to Japan, the UK, Canada, US, France, New Zealand and even the lost kingdom of Bhutan! (and everywhere in between).

Philosophy

GardensOnLine was created with the express purpose of encouraging people to interact more with nature.

The very act of engaging with plants and everything necessary to nurture and raise healthy gardens is the most restorative and satisfying of activities for people of all ages.

Understanding how each plant has it’‘s own specific requirements, how the eco-system surrounding each plant is made up of thousands of interdependent micro-organisms puts life into a perspective that drowns out the minutiae of modern life that plague us.

It also provides us with the perfect demonstration of how we could be better at organising ourselves, our families, our communities and our countries.

If every person on the planet spent one hour every day interacting with and nurturing plants, the world would be a very different place. It would be kinder, gentler, more understanding and compassionate."

For those who are not lucky enough to have a cultivatable space available to them, then surround yourself with plants indoors or on your apartment balcony.

All living things send out energy in the form of vibrations which, although largely unnoticed by us, affect us dramatically in the longer term. It is easier to maintain a sense of peace and stability when surrounded by greenery and flowers than any other environment.

For millennia humans have shared a common dream image of perfection or utopia. It invokes an overwhelming sense of safety, wellbeing and peace.

It is a lush garden.

It is our ultimate place to be.

The Team

Bob Saunders

Bob Saunders

Managing Director, Editor & Curator

Bob is a writer, photographer and filmmaker who founded Sydney based communication design agency ‘‘Carbon5’‘ in 1986. A passionate gardener since his late teens, Bob combines his gardening knowledge and experience with media production skills and an intense desire to create something good and useful.

Annie Saunders

Annie Saunders

Director of Retail and CFO

Annie is the scientist and organiser on the team. Trained as a hospital laboratory technician she has extended her scientific skills to horticulture at the excellent North Ryde TAFE in Sydney. Annie is a passionate bush-walker and gardener while also managing the complex operating systems of supply and fulfillment for the GardensOnline shop.

Charlie Saunders

Charlie (Charlotte) Saunders

Retail Operations Manager

Charlie has many years face-to-face retail experience and a personality that exudes warmth and friendliness, so who better to interact with our customers and suppliers, keeping sales moving and ensuring deliveries reach their new home ASAP. Charlie also boasts a brain that is ultimately ordered, a walking spreadsheet, making her the natural choice to keep the thousands of products in the Garden Shop in order. She is also enrolled in the TAFE North Ryde Horticulture course in order to keep the legacy alive.

Peter Stewart

Peter Stewart

Web Developer & IT Systems
(Tropic Weave Pty. Ltd.)

With a background in pure code writing with Microsoft, Peter turned his attention to the potential of the internet in the mid 90’‘s and has developed some very large and complex business process websites along the way for many major national and multinational brand names. Peter developed the entire first version of GardensOnline site and business systems from scratch and again for the current third generation site in order to ensure that we have the latest technologies at our disposal. He is also a keen gardener, looking after the technical requirements of GardensOnline from his small-holding in Hobart, Tasmania.

Jason Ellis

Jason Ellis

Design and Aart Direction

As creative director of Carbon5, Jason has contributed design to all three versions of GardensOnline over a 20 year period. A keen gardener and outdoorsman, Jason is also an influential contributor to the contemporary design and aesthetics community.

Andrew Sharapov

Andrew Sharapov

Graphic Design

Having spent many years as lead designer and art director at agencies in Sydney, Andrew returned to his home of Minsk in Belarus, only to find that his political opinions made him persona non grata. Andrew now operates his design studio ‘‘Klein Bottle Design’‘ from Vilnius, Lithuania. From there he took on the huge task of a total redesign for the third iteration of GardensOnline (20 years on from the original launch). His experience, vision and discipline has breathed much life into this third generation site and been much appreciated along the way. He remains on the team for on-going design and consultancy.