Both grew up with large gardens and gardening-infatuated mothers. Sales and Plunkett were the type of children who helped shop for bulbs, prune roses and rake grass. Small though their own gardens are, tending plants continues to loom large for them.

We speak to the designers and their mothers about how gardening runs in families and the way our responses to plants are shaped by childhood memories.

LUKE SALES

I grew up in a creative household in East Maitland outside Newcastle and gardening was a huge part of my life. It was just all on in our garden, we went to town: I had a verandah that opened off my bedroom and my own vegie patch and chickens and I was really into bulbs.

I used to go to the nursery with mum. She hated yellow flowers and so did I but lately I have started to like them – I love yellow roses, I really like wattle and I have just been through a huge jonquil phase.

Mum used to love Australian plants and she had a bit of a phase of ripping things out of the garden and replacing them with grevilleas and gums. Then that went out of style and she got back to camellias and hydrangeas and that English-country vibe and then she got a little bit obsessed with a French wildflower look – I got into that too.

I always have flowers in the office and at the moment we have giant vases of Geraldton Wax. This season our collection is based on Australian blossoms, wattles and other native flowers, but I also like carnations. I think they are due for a come back.

With limited sunlight in my apartment I keep about 10 to 15 succulents and two bonsai on a deep windowsill in my bathroom. I was pretty good at science in high school and I always thought I would study landscape design or botany. I really miss not having a proper garden. It's definitely something I will get back to.

JANELLE SALES

I have three sons and Luke was the creative, out-there one. It was funny, he just loved doing anything with me in the garden. From when he was about four or five he started tailing me around in it and when he was 11 he collected bricks, mixed up cement and made a new bed. I remember he planted catnip in it.

He used to come with me to the nursery and he loved tulips and ranunculus. He also went through a stage of collecting flowers and pressing them.

My mother and father were also very interested in gardens and would put fancy stones between each brick in their paving or buy a garden gnome and then paint it. I just love putting my hands in the dirt, whether it's pulling out weeds or putting in plants I don't care.

Luke is that way inclined too. He has a lovely appreciation of nature and now when I visit him in Sydney we go to the Botanic Gardens together.

ANNA PLUNKETT 

Mum and Dad built their own house in Albury and Dad would mow the lawn every Saturday morning and whenever I smell cut grass I think of going to netball.

The smell of flowers reminds me of home. Mum had a daphne by the front door, I never really knew it was a daphne but when I came across one later I remembered the smell. I wish I was more well-versed with my plant names.

Mum loves standard roses and had heaps of them and she also planted a camellia for each of us kids just before we were born. Recently I was in Albury and we went to a camellia show together and mum was getting so into it.

I also remember she loved those funny staghorn ferns. I never did but now I do – they are so cool and retro. My nanna was an epic gardener too. She had massive lemon and orange trees and all the grandkids picked the fruit, and she had huge hydrangeas. They are Luke and my favourite flowers and we once made a textile print of them.

My nanna also had this funny climbing plant in the back room where the television was and she was always attaching it to things with plastic clips. I want to get one.

My partner, Jack, is really into the garden. He is always pulling stuff off the street for it. Last weekend we got a timber pallet and we thought we would fill it with weed mat and soil and hang it on the wall as a planter. We have an old washing machine that we have put a big tray of succulents on, which looks crazy. And we found an old ceramic pot full of holes that we got bromeliads to grow through. But our garden is not a junkyard.

When I was growing up I used to help in the garden and would follow mum around while she was watering and fix the hose when it got stuck. Now I like watering and weeding. It makes you feel peaceful and puts you in a creative headspace.

ANGELA PLUNKETT

She was always obliging, Anna. If you asked her to do anything she would help out. She has a tiny garden in Sydney and a nice succulent garden out the front. I think the people who own the house are lucky to have her in it. Jack has a green thumb and, now that Anna has seen what a great job he has done, I think she has got more of a love of gardening.

I think gardening is something that is just in you. It's like some people can do painting and some people are good at sport. It's a love of nature I suppose.

I love plants that have a perfume and I like colour. If I have a spare spot in the garden I think about what colours I want more than what species.

Mum's hydrangeas were beautiful and I think the plant in her TV room was a philodendron. Mum was before her time. She could do anything. She could sew beautifully and had a lovely garden. I think the garden is just another way of being creative.

PLOT LINES

OPEN GARDENS

Fiona Brockhoff, Paul Bangay and Rick Eckersley are just some of those who have designed gardens that will open next Thursday for the annual NGV Women's Association Garden Day. Seven private gardens in Toorak are open for the event that is this year raising funds to purchase a Dutch Delft tulip vase. Tickets cost $35, phone 8662 1573 (event code NGVWA 161014), or purchase from 10am on the day at 14 Maple Grove, Toorak.

Open Gardens Australia is this weekend opening 10 properties in Canterbury, Glen Iris, Wheelers Hill, Warragul, Noorat, Seymour and Tallarook. There is everything from the 2.4-hectare Dalvui (laid out by William Guilfoyle in 1898 in Noorat) to the recently designed "Debbie's Aussie Garden" in Flowerdale Road, Glen Iris. Go to opengarden.org.au for more information.

GIPPSLAND EXPO

More than 40 nurseries, an orchid display and a permaculture stand are some of the offerings at the Gippsland Baw Baw Garden & Home Expo in Lardner Park (via Warragul) today and tomorrow. The event, run by the Drouin Lions Club runs from 9am to 4pm both days, $8/children under 16 free. Go to drouinlions.org.au/gardenexpo for more information.

GET FESTIVE

The National Trust has launched its inaugural Garden Festival with a line up of tours, workshops and performances at the outfit's heritage-listed properties around Victoria. The festival continues until 24 December. Go to springgardenfestival.com.au for more information about events on such topics as propagating, bee-keeping and heritage tomatoes.