Gosnells Garden Centre

Built in the early 1960s, the Gosnells Garden Centre was once a very busy plant nursery, well located to catch passing traffic, travelling north-south along Fremantle Road. That all changed in the mid-1990s with the construction of the new Corfield Street Bridge over the Southern River. Officially opened on 9 April 1996, the four-lane bridge replaced the older 1959 structure and rerouted traffic onto a new alignment. For the nursery, this meant fewer cars driving past and fewer customers stopping in.

It’s a story that echoes what happened in Halls Head a decade earlier. When the Mandurah Estuary Bridge opened on 18 October 1986, through-traffic bypassed Old Coast Road, a change that severely decreased visitor numbers to Castle Fun Park and eventually led to its closure.

In Gosnells, the effect was much the same. With north–south traffic now flowing along the new bridge and Corfield Street, Fremantle Road lost its busy traffic. To make matters worse, a new roundabout was installed at the Fremantle Road–Corfield Street junction as part of the realignment works. While the roundabout improved safety, it reduced visibility and convenience for the garden centre, making spontaneous visits far less likely.

By the early 2000s, the nursery site had fallen quiet. The block sold on 9 April 2002 for $110,000. The only clue to its more recent past is an abandoned ute on the property, once bearing signage for Lofty’s Lawnmowing Service. Records show the business was first registered on 10 June 1993 and cancelled on 20 August 1999.

Beyond that, little survives of the business, not even its official trading name. The only recent record tied to the site is an asbestos inspection carried out on 16 August 2022 by Eurofins ARL.