The nursery, which Ms Miller runs with Sean McDonald, reopened only two and a half weeks ago after the floodwaters destroyed thousands of plants in their nursery, their on-site home, the coffee-shop and their office, but there is “still a long way to go”.

“It was all destroyed and washed out, but the nursery had to take precedence,” Ms Miller said.

Although the nursery was able to claim insurance to rebuild the building, they could not be compensated for the thousands of plants they had in the growing sheds at that time of year.

Ms Miller said she “cried and cried and cried” but they still had to “pay our bills and pay our employees”.

She said the deaths during the later floods in Queensland were “a wake-up call”.

She realised although things were bad for themselves and everyone in Dubbo, she would never have coped “if anything had happened to my family”.

“Families and lives are more important,” she said. In the immediate aftermath of the floods, they were helped out by members of the Rotary clubs and Ms Miller said a couple of nice ladies came by to help clean up.

Ms Miller said it will probably take another 12 months to get back to where they were before the floods.

“We hope to have a relaunch early next year. We had considered relaunching in October, as the Garden Centre was opened 25 years ago last October but we decided to postpone it to early next year, as we were just too busy getting ready to reopen.

“Hopefully, it will be really, really lovely.”

Ms Miller said they are now starting to see some of the Christmas trade, “but I don’t think retail is what it usually is”.

This was a trend she had noticed across other retail outlets in the town. While they had usually sold a lot of water features and indoor plants, this year Ms Millar had noticed more demand for landscape gardening.

“But we will never give in, we will keep on plodding along.”

Ms Miller said one good thing that had come out of the flood was “it gave us an opportunity to make the nursery our own”.

Because the nursery had been in existence for so long, they had taken over the premises rather than create their own business. Now they had a chance to put their own stamp on the nursery and design it as they wished.