Growing local flowers in New Zealand on a small scale, especially with three small children, is many things: joy, chaos, and constant learning to name a few. As a micro flower farmer, every season teaches me something new — often the hard way. Here are three hard-won lessons I’m still learning as I grow seasonal, locally grown flowers for floristry here in Dunedin NZ.

The Journey In 2018 we set about building a cut flower field in the steep muddy eastern facing field next to our house and garden. By no means the ideal location for a flower field, I was determined to create a space for growing on the land we had adjacent to my family's established gardens - which my mum had always called Maytrees, due to the hawthorns amongst the native scrub regeneration. At the time I was working in a beautiful florist shop, and as florists we had an i