Case study — Workshops / Brisbane
Plants ina Ute
A plant rescue that runs hands-on workshops, sold through a shop that had to handle sessions, dates and places as real products.
01 — Workshops / Brisbane
Plants in a Ute
Plants in a Ute rescues abandoned plants and pallet timber, then runs hands-on workshops where you build a pot, pot a rescue plant, and take both home.
A garden-centre template would have flattened all of that into stock photos and a booking button. So the site leads with the ute, the timber and the dirt — the actual things people turn up for — and treats the workshop calendar as the main event rather than a buried form.
The story page carries its own weight too: the business started as a project between a father and son, and that sits on the site as told, not as an About-us paragraph.
- What we did
- Design direction + build
- Built with
- Custom Shopify theme
- Where
- Brisbane, QLD
- Year
- 2026
The build
The problem with a garden-centre template
Everything that makes Plants in a Ute worth turning up for is physical — rescued plants, pallet timber, dirt under your fingernails, a ute. Every off-the-shelf plant-shop theme flattens that into stock photography and a grid of pots.
The business also does not sell a simple product. It sells a Saturday: a time, a place, a limited number of seats, and a pot and plant you take home. That is closer to ticketing than retail.
A custom Shopify theme, not a plugin stack
Built as a custom Shopify theme so workshop sessions behave as real products — dates, locations, seats remaining — while the storytelling around them is not fighting the checkout for space.
The calendar is the centre of the site rather than a buried booking form. Three ways in are separated up front: public workshops, private groups, and business collaborations, because those are three different conversations.
Letting the story carry weight
The business began as a project between a father and son, rescuing plants that had been thrown out. That sits on the site as told, not compressed into an About-us paragraph, because it is the reason people choose this over a garden centre.
Ready to stop blending in?
Tell us about your business. We'll show you what everyone else is missing.