FLORA Flowers

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FLORA Flowers

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

10/06/2025

My Pansy ‘Nature Antique’ have just produced their first wee flowers.

Sadly I shall be away from the farm for most of their flowering season, so I’m taking pictures so I can still enjoy them from afar…

04/06/2025

Gosh we are so hard on ourselves aren't we!

I am done with feeling like a failure because I sometimes use w**dmat to grow my plants.

Yes it is plastic, and we try to avoid using plastic wherever possible...

BUT... it is reusable (most of mine is secondhand and I have been using it for 7 years already)

AND... I mainly only use it for my crops that overwinter and are in the ground for a looong time.

AND ... being realistic...I simply could not grow on the scale I do without using some w**dmat and still run a profitable and sustainable business. The combination of our wonderful Point Wells peat soil (which is w**d heaven), our warm climate, and our resident gang of delinquent pukekos (which means I have to grow all my seedlings under net tunnels) makes keeping on top of w**ds almost impossible.

AND finally...I have more fun things to do with my time than endless w**ding!

So if you want me to still provide you with locally grown seasonal flowers, we are both going to have to accept that a little bit of w**dmat use is part of the deal 🌼

29/05/2025

Ornamental Kale - it’s a robust and useful winter flower. We grow the long stemmed varieties, not the bedding plants you can buy from garden centres.

We have a special Kings Birthday treat for our locals today … bunches of foliage and kale … such a long lasting combo.

Available at the Joy Dispensary (Point Wells) from about midday Friday

28/05/2025

It’s not failure to buy your cut-flower seedlings instead of growing them!

But to be totally honest, for the first few years of growing flowers for sale I took great pride in growing EVERYTHING from seed myself. I was good at it and it seemed to be the cheapest option.

But fast forward a few years … my growing area had quadrupled in size, and there just weren’t enough hours in the week. I reluctantly decided to start buying some seedlings (mainly the notoriously tricky ones), but it made me feel like a failure

Looking back (and with a whole lot more business experience) I think how stupid I was to feel like a failure. Those ‘low cost’ seedlings I was growing were actually costing me a lot in time…checking on them everyday until they were large enough to plant out…and the risk that if I missed watering them on a hot summers day, I could lose a whole crop before I even planted it in the ground.

So now I’ve let go of the unrealistic expectation that I can do everything myself and I happily buy in seedlings for my flower farm when I need to. I still love growing seedlings from seed and grow tens of thousands myself each year…but only at times of the year when it makes sense.

Growing smarter with every year in this business!

15/05/2025

Oh yes I do!

You can have the best planning, but there's always a chance that something doesn't go to plan and you're left short of seedlings 🌱

And no seedlings means no flowers, which means no income down the track!

If this is you and you have a gap to fill, then I may be able to help. In a few weeks I'll be listing some of my larger grade seedlings for sale, so keep an eye on this insta account. Most of them are size 72 plugs - perfect for planting this late in the season.

And in my tradition of keeping it real - I'd love to hear your best seedling disaster...I know we all have them!

I'll go first - I once knocked over a whole 1.8m tall shelving unit of seedlings...They ended up in a jumbled mess on the floor - I managed to save some but had no idea what they all were! Luckily my friends in the were able to help me identify them (via photos) as they grew.

05/05/2025

We may not have any flowers for bunches at the moment, but we can still help you find a flowery gift for your Mum this Mother's Day.

Over on our MY PATCH website we have some curated packs of tulip bulbs, and some poppy and pansy packs. You'll be giving your Mum the gift of growing, and flowers she'll be able to enjoy for a long time.

www.mypatch.co.nz

22/04/2025

And it looks like the dahlia mania is continuing this year!!!

It feels like every year the dahlia tuber pre-sales get earlier and earlier.

I've had a lot of people asking if I'll be doing a big dahlia tuber sale this year, so just thought I'd jump on here to let you know that I am giving it a miss this year. It takes an incredible amount of work and attention to detail, and requires more storage and sorting space than I currently have available.

Instead, I'm focusing on multiplying my tuber stock of my favourite seedling-grown dahlias. I'm pretty excited about introducing these to the world...but you only get one shot at having them as a 'new release', so I'd rather do it with hundreds of tubers available.

In the meantime, I'll be trying hard to resist purchasing too many new tubers this season, although I do have my eye on a few delightful pinks from Grow With Farmlet (Cambridge). My strategy is to make sure I have a good range of dahlia colours that I can sell to my wholesale customers...and I am currently lacking in bright pink and pale yellow!

And a final tip when buying dahlia tubers - always read the fine print (or ask the seller) if the tubers are newly imported, or have been grown by the seller for at least a season. Those fresh imports often come with nasty viruses....

26/02/2025

Gotta admit…if there was ever a venue that would tempt me out of my wedding florals retirement it would be this one!

An absolute joy to deck out this quaint little historical church with flowers for my nieces fairytale wedding in the weekend.

Photos will follow once the official ones are back from the photographer.

This is me and the ‘flower farmer in training’ by the way!
andrewsweddings

25/02/2025

As I reshape my business to give me more time to be a grandparent, daughter and friend...I'm having to let some things go. And so I have decided the time has come to stop selling flowers at Charlie's Gelato.

I am so grateful to the crew at for suggesting I sell my flowers there all those years ago (I think it was back in 2018). The flower sales at Charlies in my early days of flower farming gave me the confidence to grow my business beyond what I ever imagined. Thank you so much, especially to Tania and Andrew.

And also thank you to my loyal local customers who have purchased more than $100,000 of flowers from Charlies over the years. I really appreciate you supporting my little local business.

Pretty sure this won't be the end of my relationship with Charlies...their gelato is so good that I will still be popping in regularly for a little treat 🍦

19/02/2025

As we are creeping toward Autumn, I'm counting down the weeks until my flower season ends (approx 8 weeks left).

Usually around mid-late April the flowers just slow down to a point where it's not worth picking them anymore.

But this year I've decided to end the season with a bang by having an abundance of sunflowers. Jody and I have direct-seeded a bed of sunflowers (probably 300+), and we'll be planting another bed next week. As long as the mice and birds stay away, we should have hundreds of sunflowers by mid-April.

As well as selling these through my usual places, some of them will be used as 'social sunflowers'. They will be distributed to people in our community who need to be shown a bit of kindness. If you are part of a social wellbeing enterprise in our local (Warkworth/Matakana) area, and could distribute some bunches of sunflowers mid-late April, you are welcome to get in touch 🌻

09/02/2025

We are fortunate in New Zealand to have a large and collaborative network of seasonal flower growers, largely thanks to and several flower farming facebook groups.

I've received lots of valuable tips and advice from more experienced growers over the years, so I always try to pass on any information that I think might be useful to others.

There is a bit of a standing joke that yellow is probably the least popular flower colour to grow, and also a difficult colour to use well in bouquets. But I am loving this Yellow Aster Matsumoto which quickly fades to a nice lemon yellow. I find it pairs nicely with either pastel flowers or bright flowers. She is definitely back on the grow list for next Summer!

Address

42 Viv Davie-Martin Drive
Warkworth
0984

Website

http://www.floraflowers.co.nz/

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Flowers with creative flair

FLORA Flower Studio is my home-based florist business in Warkworth. I’m very excited to be able to combine my background in both art and horticulture to bring you flowers with creative flair, and I’m currently obsessed with growing a collection of foliage and flowers sustainably so that I can provide you with some ‘grown-not-flown’ flora in your purchases. I’m available for pre-ordered bouquets, wedding flowers, funeral flowers and flowers for any other special occasion (or just because you deserve a treat!). My farm fresh flowers are also available at Charlie Gelato Garden during their strawberry season (approx last week Sept - Christmas)