About Us
Sunshine Iris and Daylily Nursery is situated North-west of Hay NSW in the Western Riverina, Australia on the sheep property "Erin". The Nursery is managed by Annabel Hanna.
Purchased from Mandy and Margie in 2025, the nursery has moved west onto the banks of the Lachlan River. Sunshine Iris Nursery has become Sunshine Iris and Daylily Nursery. Erin is already home to many beautiful Irises in the homestead garden established by my mother-in-law Sonia Woods. Sonia introduced me to how beautiful an Iris can be! They have thrived in our environment which at times can be harsh, like most of Australia. The resilience of the plants through drought and even flood have inspired me and grown my love for gardening. I am looking forward to this venture and planning on introducing many more irises and daylilies in the years to come.
Sunshine Iris and Daylily Nursery was first established in the early 90s by a Dutch gentleman in Lavington, NSW. Details are sketchy about this period of the nursery's life. Carolyn Young from Jindera, NSW was the next owner and owned the nursery for about 5 years before selling to Randall Lieschke from Henty in 1998. Randall ran the nursery as Yesteryear Iris and Daylily Nursery for 9 years and speaks very fondly of it.
Tory Simmons and her father Peter Croker bought the nursery from Randall in 2007 as an addition to their Hereford farm and the plants were moved to Bolong Farms, The Rock, NSW. Tory says the nursery helped to drought proof their farm during those few tough years.
Bolong Farms Iris Farm became Sunshine Iris Nursery in March 2013 when Mandy and her daughter Elissa purchased the business from the Croker/Simmons family at The Rock. They moved the 20 000 plus daylilies and irises to the cropping property "Quamby", located 8km north of Lockhart. The irises were then moved again in 2015 to "Wargam" where Mandy lives and she became key caretaker. In 2017 Elissa decided to focus on more academic interests and passed the garden fork over to Mandy’s twin sister, Margie to join the iris business.
Read more about our plants for information on the types of iris flowers and daylilies. Sunshine Iris and Daylily Nursery currently have over 300 varieties of iris flowers and over 100 varieties of daylilies. We specialise in the older vintage bearded iris varieties including tall bearded, median bearded and dwarf bearded iris. Our daylilies include large, doubles, spider types and miniature varieties. We also plan to introduce a selection of the newest bearded iris from breeders around the world.
Our plants are available for purchase online all year round. Arrival of your plants may be delayed in October and November as we do not pick when the irises are flowering. We are open by appointment in October and November, contact us to arrange a time. We would love for you to come and visit us!
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