Queensland Native Seeds is owned and managed by Lachlan Scanlan and his son Cru Scanlan. We produce native grass, tree and shrub seed for rehabilitation in mines across Queensland and NSW.

The supply of native plant seed has been tightly limited in the decades since native plant rehabilitation began. This is for several reasons. Native plants rely on very particular weather sequences besides their own trait tendencies to set seed in a commercially viable way and it is common for viable crops of trees and shrubs to only appear every five to ten years. There are large knowledge barriers to entry. There’s considerable risk in holding relatively high cost products reliant on a relatively small market.

The final products sold are either complex seed mixes bagged and sold to customers (mainly mines) or seed sold by species name to our trade allies who will then construct and sell mixtures to the same market and to road projects and others. A complex seed mix varies widely in diversity and species composition. However, where coal mining is concerned it may consist on average about five to six Eucalypt/Corymbia species, five or six Acacia or N-fixer shrubs, five to eight native grass species and a smaller number of dry-rainforest taxa. In some cases, exotic pasture grasses are used because they are already naturalised in an area, and local grazing interests are taken into consideration by miners.

Queensland Native Seeds works closely with local engineers, fabricators and materials suppliers, so they become familiar with our goals, thereby anticipating how we might innovate and solve problems. In recent years projects have been the development of specialised grass seed harvesters, transport equipment, seed cleaning machinery, IT, the construction of shedding and now native pasture research and development as we progress toward managed sources of grass seed.

Queensland Native Seeds is situated on several properties in the South Burnett district although seed is harvested over much of the state. Producing a comprehensive offering of native seeds in volume is a task requiring substantial planning, organisation and travelling. Coordinating with the few other production-shop front entities and with the few reliable, independent seed collectors that have forged their position in this field is also necessary to bringing the quantities of native seed to market, our customer base requires. We also continue to help new and existing seed collectors to develop methods and locate resources. An assumption implicit in our strategy has been that the market will grow as the products improve in quality, volume and reliability. This has been verified by results in Queensland to date.