The life of Jeno Kapitany (collectors corner & Paradisia hoyas melbourne)
Jeno Kapitany
Born 15th May, 1957.
Paradisia is a household name in the nursery industry. Collector’s Corner the hub for unusual plants in Australia & the National Dinosaur Museum a tourist destination in Canberra. There is one man who is in the background of all these, and many more projects, whose enthusiasm and dedication is responsible for them evolving. His name is Jeno Kapitany and this is his story.
My parents were refugees fleeing from Hungary when I was born in Villach in Austria in May, 1957. Hungary had been occupied by the Russians since WW II and in 1956 my father was part of the Hungarian Revolution, expelling the Russians. In 1958 Australia accepted our family as refugees and so we boarded a boat for Perth when I was 6 months old. I have 2 younger brothers who were born when our family settled in Australia.
We were first housed at the Bonegilla Migrant Reception camp at Wodonga Victoria before later settling at Carlton. Dad, who was a lawyer and spoke 5 languages found work at the Holden Assembly Plant at Dandenong. There was a small Hungarian community in the area and these became our family in Australia.
I commenced school at Yarraman Park Primary school and later went to Noble Park High School. I was amongst the top students academically and my vision was to go to University and do veterinary Sciences. But after leaving high school I started working in the Aquatic Fish industry and decided to get real world experience instead, believing that university did not cover my interests.
My father was an avid collector having a massive stamp collection from around the world and was also an avid gardener and at 10 I was collecting also. My fascination was succulent plants, and later at 12 I was collecting orchids. My weekly pocket money was spent on fish or plants. By the time I was 13 I was doing Sunday work in a very run down nursery. This consisted of potting plants, weeding and making potting mix. By 14 I worked at a private aquarium where there was a collection of Cichlids and other unusual fish and from 15 I worked on Saturdays at an all aquarium pet supplies shop.
Our back yard was full of an assortment of cages of animals and reptiles and insects. Nearby was a creek and native forest which had an abundant supply of wildlife which we collected. The ocean, as well as the Grampians was another lucrative source. Family holidays to Queensland consisted of collecting shells, butterflies and reptiles some of which came back to Melbourne. Another occupation I had during this time was being my father’s labourer. I dug trenches, mixed cement etc. while my father built and extended our family home. It was a continual work in progress. During high school days another passion I developed, following my father, was photography. I became the unofficial school photographer, filming HSC events and then developing the prints in a dark room we had at home.
I left school at 17 and worked at the aquarium shop, building up a fish breeding centre. I specialised in breeding a group of the sub-tropical Cichlids fish from the Rift Lakes in Africa which the business would then supply to outlets all around Australia. I had every Wednesday off and would visit my favourite, highly guarded secret spot on the Goulburn River where I collected 2-3,000 aquatic plants for sale.
My goal was always to be self-employed so in 1977 I went on a road trip to find a place to settle down and run my own business. My younger brother & I spent 4 ½ months travelling up the Queensland coast to Cairns, and then Darwin and everywhere in between. We collected butterflies, fish and reptiles. We knew what we were looking for, and anything unusual was labelled, packaged and sent back to Melbourne. We really roughed it living out of the station wagon, living off the land, sometimes waiting for payment for the produce sent, before we could buy food or petrol again. The most unusual request we had was for a 6 foot brown snake, which we sent air freight wrapped in a cloth bag, consigned as cargo.
As a result of this road trip I then spent the next 2 ½ years managing a Fish farm and Aquatic Plant Facility at Hervey Bay and also worked as a marine diver collecting fish off the Queensland coast.
The partnership in Queensland had no future and I was too far from our markets so I returned to Melbourne in May 1980. My brother had once sold at a market some home grown plants, so together we started selling at weekend markets with plants grown in dad’s backyard. This became very successful. There was a strong demand for odd and unusual plants but supply was not available so I and my brother, Attila, purchased a large residential block in Noble Park in the late 1980’s and covered the huge back yard with greenhouses. We grew Cacti & Succulents, Bonsai, Carnivorous Plants and collectable indoor plants. By late 1981 the business was very successful and both Attila and I were full time with the business. We grew all our odd and unusual lines and purchased plants from many other growers to maintain our market sales. Paradisia was registered at the start of 1982 and we started looking for a much larger property. We found a 14 acre site in Narre Warren North in early 1982 and started to establish a series of greenhouses which numbered almost 70 within 6 years.
During the early 1980’s we were operating up to 7 markets per week and decided to try mail order but due to the high costs and workload the returns were very low, so we therefore decided in 1983 to search for a retail site. After a few months of failed efforts, we exhibited at the 1984 Garden Week and met Brian Jackson who offered us the opportunity to build our nursery at Garden World. So Collectors Corner was born. It was designed as a tourist attraction with the option of charging an admission price to the cactus garden and selling cacti, succulents, bromeliad, carnivorous plants, orchids and bonsai plants. It became quite popular and featured in Kevin Heinze’s Gardening Australia show, as well as other horticultural media. We still maintained the 3 best markets, where, especially at the Queen Victoria markets maintained enough turnover to support the growing business. The 750 square metres at Garden World was not enough so when Garden World in 1986 (which was probably the largest retail nursery complex in Australia) re-developed their site we were given 2,500 square metres to develop a new collectors corner with much bigger bonsai area, a cacti collection, an indoor garden, orchid room and room for expansion. Collectors Corner is still there today with other features like sea shells, gemstones, fossils and minerals also being added. In October 1987 when the new site opened it was featured on Burkes Backyard on one of its first prime time shows and became an instant hit. In 1988 a gem shop and displays were added, and have become the largest exhibition of gems and fossils in Australia with specimens like our almost priceless ‘The Ice Queen’ a 450 kg cluster of quartz crystals from Brazil, being the main feature. In 1989 we started the Melbourne International Orchid Spectacular which is still running today and is Australia’s largest Annual Orchid Show.
In 1984 Paradisia began expanding into wholesale sales with some retail customers, and by 1986 we were selling to some Target and Kmart stores. Paradisia was expanding in both retail and wholesale areas. By 1989 we were supplying Kmart and Big W stores across Australia. Paradisia is now one of Australia’s largest wholesale nurseries with staff in the mid 130’s and operate on 3 production sites of over 50,000m2 of covered growing houses in addition to the retail site at Collectors Corner.
Paradisia follows very strict guidelines. Everything we do and grow has to be related to the products we collect and have some form of hobby nature. If we were to add another group of plants into our system we would do this to include as many members of that family as possible, not just the few profitable members. Many of the plants we grow are grown not for profit but to bring the interest of our hobbies to the general public. Pre the advent of the internet many of the products we grew were grown at a loss, in particular some of our rarest and slowest growing products, many of which cannot be grown by commercial nurseries.
A good example are Hoyas. I first started growing these commercially in 1983 and collected every type of Hoya that was available at the time. Over the past 40 years I have amassed this to over 240 different species and cultivars which I maintain in our growing nurseries. Often they are kept not for sale but just to preserve the species in our collection. I have had some plants I have kept 20 years before I have added them to my production. Many of our plants are only offered in very small numbers, maybe only 2 or 3 for sale each year.
But it wasn’t just the plants that I was interested in. It was the presentation and the packaging which has set Paradisia apart from all the other nurseries and which has ensured constant sales and promoted them as the best in the industry. We are innovative and prepared to change and introduce new and novelty products. We were the first (back in the 1980’s) to print labels on photographic paper for our plants which included a photo of the flower to give the buyer a picture. Every few years the technology improved as did our labelling. In fact this was so new in Australia that when I went to the Floriade show in Holland in 1992 I noticed that amongst the wall display of plant labels, about one quarter were mine. I began travelling overseas to America & Europe visiting other plant collectors and bringing plants back to Australia. I worked with factories in China, Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines’ where pottery for plants was produced. Animal and different shape poly ceramics were made to put plants in. In 1991 fridge magnets were designed to which air plants were attached and we are still the only seller of these novelty magnets. With my creative flair, I design products myself coming up with around 200 new designs each year.
The greatest advancement of my projects was in 2010 with the creation of a 14,500 sq. meter glasshouse on a new site in Narre Warren North. This gave us one of the best growing facilities in Australia and allowed the repurposing of the other sites, which then increased the company’s turnover by 150% in the space of 3 years. This also allowed Collectors Corner to improve its range so a remarkable growth was achieved in both the retail and the wholesale sites from 2011 to 2020. Even through Covid the company has remained very strong, with only a small reduction in staff from our peak of 150 in 2019 in Paradisia.
I am also very involved in Gems Fossils and Minerals and work with my brother Tom on a Wholesale business called Crustal World and Prehistoric Journeys which employs about 50 staff and The National Dinosaur Museum in Canberra where we employ another 25 staff.
I spend a lot of time traveling to odd and exotic locations to visit plants in habitat, partly looking for new species to introduce to the hobby and also to create a better understanding of many of the odd plants we grow. In many cases it is not new species that I am looking for but variations in populations which you often find when plants are distributed over wide ranges. In 2022 I spent 18 days in central Brazil visiting cacti and bromeliads and in November I visited Madagascar for 17 days driving through remote arid areas in 4wd’s. This January (2023) I will spend 15 days in Tucson Arizona visiting gems shows to purchase products for Collectors Corner and The National dinosaur Museum as it has been 3 years since I have been able to travel to this event.
Paradisia has had an unenviable reputation in the nursery industry for maintaining high standards, reliability and quality products for many years. Its success is due to the fact that it is a fully integrated company with a very complex business model where they control every stage of the production. They maintain stock plants for seed, cutting and breeding purposes. They create their own laboratory for tissue culture and seed work. They design and market their own labels and pottery. Jeno also travels the world looking for new plants to import. Paradisia has achieved many milestones over its 42 year history with many notable displays and gold medals won at the International Flower and Garden Show in Melbourne.
Jeno has dedicated his whole life to his passion and built his businesses around that interest. He is keen to share, educate and promote through articles and photos on his facebook page. Jeno’s words of wisdom is to keep asking questions, never stop learning and Believe in yourself. Jeno was married for 24 years and has 2 sons who are now part of the business and it is hoped one day will grow Paradisia into the future.