FLORA Flowers

FLORA Flowers Artist turned Flower Farmer & Florist. Growing extraordinary flowers for local people to enjoy.

14/08/2026

The next batch of Nga Rakau seedlings have been delivered, and dispatch starts on Monday.

We’ve tried to make these seedlings accessible to small scale flower farmers by offering half and quarter tray options, but that means someone has to cut up all those trays!

And this weekend that someone is me 💪

All up I have to make 366 tray cuts, which is a bit hard on the hands, so I’ll probably do it in 4 stints.

The weather is looking perfect for seedling storage and dispatch…just a few showers to water them this weekend, then sunshine for dispatching next week.

So I’ll sleep okay at night 🌱

12/08/2026

I’m only growing a few ranunculus this year. I was going to limit myself to 3 crates, but 15 crates later I’ve forced myself to stop!

I’m really just growing them so I can take photos for my MY PATCH seedlings sales next Autumn.

I’m usually a fan of the pale colours, but some of the deep pinks in the berries and cream mix are really growing on me!

11/08/2026

Not all dahlias are well behaved when it comes to dividing them.

Some have dozens of tightly packed tubers with short necks that are impossible to divide without damaging a lot of them.

So I always start my tubers dividing off with an easy-to-divide variety! I think it’s a smart move…

This year I decided Flower Farmer- Sarah Koks ‘Sarah’ was the best behaved, so she was first on the dividing bench.

5 short minutes later we had piles of nice chunky little tubers, with virtually no wastage.

Apparently her ‘sister’ Flower Farmer- Sarah Koks ‘Leah’ is also easy to divide, so I’ll be finding her crate of tubers tomorrow.

Both highly recommended varieties if you ever get the chance to purchase them!

There’s been a lot of firsts and lasts for our dahlias this week!Last tubers finally dug (phew! That felt like a maratho...
07/08/2026

There’s been a lot of firsts and lasts for our dahlias this week!

Last tubers finally dug (phew! That felt like a marathon)

First succession of dahlia tubers planted, and the first time were trialling treating this first batch like annuals. We’ve planted them close together and we’ll dig the clumps up and dump them after the first few flushes of flowers

First little shoots appearing on the tubers were waking up early to take cuttings from. These ones are Ryecroft Jan (my fave white ball)

First sowing of dahlia seeds, and the first time were sowing seed from our own varieties.

And the first time we’ve had to deal with frost and dahlia tubers…luckily the precious ones were tucked away safely inside!

So all round a busy week in dahlia world!

06/08/2026

I saw someone do something really clever filming through a dandelion seed head.

Saw a perfect dandelion head yesterday so thought I’d give it a go!

Not as easy as I’d imagined…and now I’ve probably spread dandelion seeds all through my flower beds.

But please enjoy my extremely poor attempt at capturing some beauty.

I think I’d better stick to growing flowers…

04/08/2026

We’ve been a bit quiet on here since launching our new varieties of dahlias…but the work is still quietly happening behind the scenes (although it was a mostly inside day today due to the temperature drop🥶)

Alongside developing new dahlia varieties (but no where near as impressive…or as much hard work) we are also 3 years into trying to develop a few different colour strains of Iceland Poppies. We hope to refine a pink strain, and a pastel strain. I think it’s going to be a long process to get rid of the bright colours that seem to be dominant in poppy genetics! But we’ll carry on…it’s a good excuse to keep growing poppies even though we don’t really sell them (but they are perfect for giving away aren’t they).

This delicious poppy popped up in the poppy patch this week - if I could have a flower bed full of these I’d be a happy flower farmer.

P.S. excuse the little video bomber…she’s a happy soul (and very good company - loves to chatter and help in the garden)

Back in March, following Floret releasing their potting mix trial results, I decided to do another potting mix trial wit...
02/08/2026

Back in March, following Floret releasing their potting mix trial results, I decided to do another potting mix trial with some readily available additives.

This included various combinations of potting mix, compost, Revital Worm, Hamish’s secret mix, Dave’s Turbo, and the ‘Florets Winner’ mix of blood, bone and kelp meal.

I potted up some spare amaranthus seedlings into each mix, then sifted each mix and direct sowed some cornflower seeds into each one.

To be honest, the results were not quite what I expected,and a little bit contradictory in some cases! But overall, the addition of compost improved the growth of the seedlings, and the further addition of blood, bone and kelp gave the best growth (as found by Floret, so no surprises there!)

This mix was not the winner for sown seeds though - mixes containing compost and either Hamishs secret mix or Dave’s turbo did better than the one containing the blood/bone/kelp additive.

I love doing these little experiments, so will try some more this spring. I think I’ll use statice plants as they show the effects of poor nutrition quickly.

Let me know which potting mix is your go-to for potting up seedlings, and I’ll consider giving the most popular types a trial. Potting mix is pretty expensive so we want to know we’re using the one that’s best for our plants!

I’ll also trial some different concentrations of the bone/blood/kelp combo to see what works best. The kelp meal I used was pretty expensive, but I think I’ve found a cheaper source through a chicken feed place!

Putting my horticulture degree to good use???!

A huge and heartfelt THANK YOU!We weren’t sure how our dahlia tuber presale would go or what you would think of our new ...
01/08/2026

A huge and heartfelt THANK YOU!

We weren’t sure how our dahlia tuber presale would go or what you would think of our new varieties, but it seems that you love them as much as we do.

What blew me away most was the many ‘good luck’ messages I received during the day from customers and fellow flower farmers. I feel like I have made some new flower friends this week and even have a few offers for me to come on farm visits if I am ever travelling around the country.

And the response to the stories behind the dahlia names has been phenomenal – I wasn’t sure if anyone would even read them! I’ve already heard from a few of you that you are missing the stories and want more…but you might have to wait until next year when we will be releasing the next lot of new varieties!

It truly was a dahlia sale full of heart! And my heart will remain full while I am dividing the clumps over the next few weeks.

P.S. If you purchased tubers in the presale, could I please ask that you check your delivery address in the confirmation email. Due to the time pressure of the sale, and autofill functions, I am getting lots of emails from customers to tell me they have used the wrong address.

After years of searching, we have finally found this old photo! We knew it existed…just didn’t know where it was.This is...
01/08/2026

After years of searching, we have finally found this old photo! We knew it existed…just didn’t know where it was.

This is me and my Dad (John) hard at work on our Point Wells market garden around 1974. I may have stopped eating the soil…but it’s still where I do my growing.

And if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I named one of my dahlia varieties after him ‘Dear John’.

There’s still some left on the website if you want to order them or add them to your order…but I will NOT be sad if there’s some left for me! I’ll be planting every single one…such a useful colour to use (it’s more purple in real life) and a rare colour in a ball dahlia.

Thanks to my big sis Debbie for unearthing this photo in one of the many boxes of family archives - it brought tears to my eyes to see it ❤️

NOW OPENOur dahlia tuber presale of the 15 new varieties we have developed here in Point Wells, New Zealand!So proud of ...
30/07/2026

NOW OPEN

Our dahlia tuber presale of the 15 new varieties we have developed here in Point Wells, New Zealand!

So proud of our years of work getting to this point :)

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42 Viv Davie-Martin Drive
Warkworth
0984

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