Our Story

Weeds and weeding labour were a huge cost for our nurseries and constant hand weeding or spraying of herbicides were very unpopular jobs with us and our nursery crew. We trialled every weed mat technology, herbicide and strategic control method out there to reduce the weed burden, but still found ourselves weeding 2-3 days per week. One evening Lawrence brought the issue and a few vague ideas to David, Simon and Nicholas, 2 engineers and a physicist with a garage full of 3D printing machines - and together we came up with many prototypes to stop weeds. Over a full year later, long hours spent adjusting the 3D printer and many dozens of prototypes, we finally came up with something that worked and was elegant as well - the PotHead V1! Once we teamed up with the injection moulding experts at Garden City Plastics we were able to produce these much more efficiently and quickly out of recycled plastic…

Lawrence Ranson Has a forestry and horticulture background, and currently manages 2 conifer production nurseries and several plantations in rural NSW, Australia. Lawrence is the outdoorsy one always looking to optimise things and minimise the many repetitive tasks faced in horticulture, because ‘laziness is the mother of invention’ after all.