Robyn Duval

Robyn’s love of plants came from her parents and grandparents. Having been in the industry for decades, Robyn studied Horticulture Operations at Wollongbar TAFE and has worked for a number of nurseries. Robyn has been with Alpine for 5 years having originally started at our Dural site in 2015 and now works across both Alpine’s Dural and Arcadia nurseries.

Robyn’s experience at Alpine started as Propagation Supervisor. At the time, taking on what could only be described as challenging – with suboptimal facilities for propagation purposes where some of her techniques would normally only be attempted in sophisticated and controlled environments. Despite numerous hurdles, Robyn’s incredible contribution and hard work saw results, supplying a high proportion of tube stock for the Arcadia site and making it largely self-sufficient.

During this Propagation management role, Robyn took two team members under her wing that had absolutely no prior experience or knowledge of the propagation process. However, with Robyn’s training, development, nurturing and supportive ways, sharing her knowledge and experience, she cultivated her two protégés into competent Propagators.

More recently an opportunity arose that saw Robyn move into a broader role. Alpine places a very high level of importance on the quality of stock which is the cumulative work of entire teams, including Robyn’s. She currently overseas and supervises Alpine’s small plant maintenance, assigning specific tasks to her team, pruning, plant nutrition, weed management and pest and disease monitoring. Ken Bevan, General Manager at Alpine Nurseries comments “I have full confidence in Robyn’s ability to tackle this new challenge and to do a great job of maintaining and continuing to improve the quality of all our plants including the training and development of her team.”

It’s Robyn’s incredible drive and passion for what she does that is supported by her extensive knowledge and experience. Her team and others at Alpine feed of this drive and passion and without knowing it, her ‘exacting standards’ for ‘best quality plants’ motivates and influences everyone around her.
When Robyn is not hanging out with Alpine, she is fishing on her boat on the Hawkesbury with her husband Tony and dog ‘Chief’.

Although Robyn is surrounded by vast varieties of spectacular plants day in and day out, she singles out one – Blandfordia nobilis (Christmas bell flower) for its delicate beauty and because it reminds her of home in Northern NSW along with fond memories of her Grandmother.