Behind the blooms

There’s something practical and inspiring happening across Marlborough. From coastal hills to tucked-away backyards, people are carving flower patches out of paddocks, lawns and spare corners, turning soil into saleable stems. They work in gumboots and sunhats, hands in the dirt, juggling families, jobs and weather windows. It’s not easy work. It’s early alarms, bent backs, burst irrigation and crops that sometimes fail for no good reason – but the payoff is undeniable: the buzz of harvest mornings, buckets of fresh colour, and the satisfaction of building businesses from the ground up.

Drive the backroads and you’ll see it in the gaps between vineyards: zinnias flaring by a mailbox, a farm gate with an honesty box and armfuls of dahlias, or neat rows of ranunculus shimmering like silk. For some, like Kate Tomlinson of Blicks Blooms, it started small with a single box of bulbs. “Mum gave me a box when my son was born,” she says, “and I loved everything about it, from the planting to the waiting and then the surprise of them popping up again.” Years later, that simple act still guides her.

Others came to flowers from classrooms, corporate jobs or the relentlessness of early parenthood. “After having kids, I needed something creative but grounding,” says Lucy McKnight of Picks & Petals, “something that belonged entirely to me.”

Plots range from 100 square metres on an urban section to generous paddocks on family farms. The common thread is a steady, seasonal rhythm of the excitement of rifling through seed catalogues in mid-winter, trays under lights and on windowsills, pricking out, hardening off, planting, staking, netting, weeding and harvesting. By spring, colour arrives fast with ranunculus in sherbet shades, glowing iceland poppies, sweet peas perfuming the air and peonies that will blow open if you blink.

Summer turns up the volume with dozens more varieties whose names roll deliciously off the tongue – dahlias, snapdragons, strawflowers, amaranthus, asters, sunflowers, zinnias, lisianthus, hydrangeas, protea and cosmos – in unapologetic colour, backed by workhorse fillers such as queen anne’s lace, statice, feverfew, ammobium, tweedia, cornflowers, campanula, nigella, phylica, viburnum, riceflower, berzilia, snowballs, larkspur, bupleurum, matricaria and a host of others.

Most of these growers raise plants from seed. It keeps costs down, widens choice and teaches fast. You learn to read a leaf for what’s missing, to water deeply then leave it alone, to cut in the cool and move quickly to the chiller. You also learn that the garden tells the truth. “It’s such a pleasure being able to grow beautiful flowers all the way from tiny seeds and then know that they are going to be gifted or bought by people for their own enjoyment,” says Rebecca Stoner of Willow & Rose Floral.

The new wave of Marlborough growers split their time between practicality and design. Rows are laid out for airflow and efficient picking; beds are mulched, paths are mown, irrigation is repaired more often than anyone would like – and yet there’s room for instinct to take the lead, from a drift of foxgloves under fruit trees for the bees, a row of “just-because” trial varieties, or a corner where the kids can plant whatever they fancy. For those who sell bouquets, styles vary with some loving the cottagey and loose look, others the more traditional. The aim is consistent: healthy stems, repeat flowering, and bouquets that look alive rather than overworked.

Family threads through almost every story. Kari Robinson of Belle Fleur grew up with a dad who looked after public gardens and helped shape Garden Marlborough. She now runs tunnel houses and paddocks of proteas, dahlias, lilies and gladioli, selling into local shops. Rebecca’s garden wraps around a pond her father built in memory of her mother. It’s a working patch, not a show garden, but it feels like both – with grassed lanes for moving buckets, shrubs chosen for cutting and beds of annuals that keep the colour coming.

It is not always serene in the flower patch. Marlborough growers live and breathe the weather forecast. Northerlies can shred seedlings and a late frost can erase months of work. Water is a constant calculation and weeds don’t take days off. It’s not all pretty dresses and picking posies – it can be mud, aching shoulders and 5am harvests so you’re done before the sun hits. Still, the grind carries a quiet payoff. “You’re exhausted but fulfilled,” says Jo Ensor of Tyntesfield Blooms. “Coming in covered in soil, knowing you’ve created something beautiful and useful, is hard to beat.”

These businesses sell wherever community gathers. Roadside stalls are stocked before school drop-off. Cafés take weekly bunches. Florists message for last-minute blooms. There are Saturday pick-your-own mornings, “Build Your Own Bunch” pop-ups, and evening “Pick and Sip” sessions where friends wander rows with snips in one hand and a glass in the other. Social media does the rest: a reel of the first of the season’s dahlias, a story announcing the next varieties are being picked, a photographic panorama that tracks the season from the first ranunculus to the last chrysanthemum.

Collaboration takes place with seeds and tubers swapped and extra seedlings shared when a tray fails. Notes are compared on soil mixes, best-performing zinnias, and the eternal dahlia conundrums discussed – staking, disbudding, spacing and storage. Florists like Stacey Nicholas at Terracedale create with what the season gives and can pivot from an on-trend bridal bouquet to a simple, affordable bunch that survives a hot kitchen bench.

Designer Bianca Nardella of DIRT Studio is known for wild, textural arrangements that feel alive and modern. “People are drawn to flowers that mirror the season,” she says. “Armfuls of what’s hot that week, fresh, in season and beautifully raw.”

Mayflower Studio Florist’s Jane Robinson purchases as many flowers grown locally as she can, particularly in the spring and summer months when they are the most available. “The season starts with some beautiful peonies, lilacs, viburnums and gerberas and then we enjoy all the other different varieties as they come onstream,” she says.

Whether you buy from a roadside stall, catch a florist’s weekly drop at the supermarket, or book a bucket for a DIY wedding, the flowers feel close to where they were grown – and that proximity matters. Local stems travel hours, not days. They’re cut at peak and do not have to survive a truck journey from another region.

Beneath the romance, there’s a load of organisation taking place. These growers know their numbers: bed length, stems per square metre, the price that makes a crop worth planting again. They plan succession sowings, track germination rates, and decide which varieties earn a second season. They fix pumps, learn basic plumbing, and can reverse a trailer at speed. They’re also marketers, photographers, delivery drivers and bookkeepers. Some are expanding into events while others are deliberately staying small to fit family and other work. All of them are building businesses with roots.

Ask why they keep at it and the answers are surprisingly consistent. It’s being close to the land, they say, and the way a day of physical work can settle a noisy mind. It’s the look on someone’s face when they choose their own bouquet from a field or watching a bride and her friends pick stems for wedding flowers and realising they helped build that moment.

“Even a few square metres can be full of life,” says Sarah Gray of Grown by Sarah, who proves what’s possible on a 100-square-metre town section. “You just have to start.”

Toni Taylor of Thomson’s Ford Farmlet started only a year ago. “A big part of my flower-growing enterprise is for my three-year-old, as I’m determined to convince her that fairies live among the flowers,” she says with a smile. “I plant anything bright, delicate, or whimsical that might just hide a fairy or two.”

Picks and Petals’ Lucy McKnight planted her first rows two years ago. “Having three kids in four years, I needed something that I could do at home with the kids and that I enjoy and is good for my mental health.”

Caitlin Phibbs of 101FlowersNZ was inspired to grow flowers for her own wedding and has well and truly caught the flower growing bug, starting with a few dahlia tubers in an urban backyard in town before moving to a place with a paddock to expand her passion.

Meanwhile, stalwarts of the local flower industry are busier than ever. Gerberas keep The Pot Shed’s Andrew and Melisa Basset very busy with plenty of demand locally and throughout New Zealand for their joyful blooms, while Gray’s Floral produces countless cut flower seedlings for both the public to purchase and flower growers.

The flower-growing movement and back-to-the-land dream is being fulfilled with seeds, kids underfoot and notes for future growing seasons. The band of Marlborough flower growers have built stalls, courted cafés, answered DMs, and are putting more colour on local kitchen tables and more fragrance into ordinary days. In a fast, digital world, they’re offering something tangible: stems you can hold, blooms that open on your bench and proof that patience and hard work still pays.

They’re growing viable, local businesses and developing an abundance of skills worth passing on – one bloom, one bucket and one early morning at a time.

Words: Adrienne Matthews