Floral therapy helps grieving process
Supported by their families, Gemma and Ben McDougall took on a new challenge two years ago. The couple, who run a dairy farm in Kimbolton, Manawatū, added a flower farm to their agricultural business.
‘‘It has been a big, big learning curve,’’ says Gemma. ‘‘I’ve actually got a nursing degree – kind of similar I guess, I have to nurse things.’’
Gemma was inspired to start the flower farm in May 2019 after her mother died from bowel cancer in January that same year.
‘‘I’d been previously working on the farm with Ben and obviously had young children and I just needed something. I needed something for myself and I needed to get my hands in the dirt to kind of get through the grief ofmum passing away. So itwas pretty tough.’’
Gemma says her floral therapy has definitely helped with her grieving process.
‘‘But I just keep expanding,’’ she says. ‘‘Now I’m running to keep up with kids and flowers.’’
The couple have two children who they say love being out on the farm.
‘‘And they’re pretty handy with the flowers, to be honest,’’ says Gemma.
Their business offers both fresh and dried flowers and the varieties they grow are amix.
‘‘I have honestly got a real fruit salad in the paddock. There’s a bit of everything so that I can do lots of mix boxes for florists, and some of the things that aren’t typically seen at auction.’’
Dried flower arrangements are back in fashion, and Gemma says they have proven popular.
‘‘It helps to extend my season of fresh flowers and helps to stop any wastage, basically. But I think this year the trend will be amix of dried and fresh. We’re starting to see it already in some of the weddings that are going on.’’
The couple converted their woolshed into a drying room to accommodate the developing appetite for dried blooms.
As well as florists, Gemma also sells her bouquets at Cheltenham General Store in Manawatū and they can also be bought online through their business website, Ataahua Blooms Flower Farm. She also offersworkshops for peoplewho want to learn how to style flowers.
‘‘I got a local potter to design some beautiful vases and then people came and got to snip their own flowers and then design into the pottery vase they took home.
‘‘People really like the experience of coming out and seeing the flower farm and being able to pick their own things.’’
The Ataahua name was chosen to honour Gemma’s Māori heritage through her mother. Fittingly, the name means ‘‘beautiful’’.
‘‘That was away to incorporate her back into my business, even though she was really not into flowers,’’ laughs Gemma.
‘‘But she was a bloody hard worker so she would have been down here helping.’’
Gemma’s dad has also been instrumental in the business.
‘‘As soon as I came up with the idea of flower farming, Dad gave me $20,000 to kind of start up as a loan,’’ she says.
Turning the land to flowers was an easy decision, as Ben says it was an area unsuitable for farming.
‘‘It was a little wee paddock and the woolshed area, a lot of it’s based around that, and we don’t run sheep on this farm,’’ he says.
‘‘So it was almost land that just wasn’t getting used for anything. We weren’t getting any benefit out of it. So it worked reallywell to be able to actually use that land. And the flowers – probably on a per hectare basis – make a lot more money than what farming does.’’
‘‘We’ve got dairy and beef on this property and I said to him, ‘I bet you I can make more per hectare doing flowers than you can doing dairy’,’’ says Gemma.
As well as their burgeoning flower operation, the couple are also kept busywith theirmain business.
‘‘We’ve got dairy cows,’’ says Ben. ‘‘We’ve got service bulls, which predominantly are jersey bulls thatwe sell back into the dairy industry for mating.
‘‘We also fatten lambs and lamb a few ewes and we do quite a bit of cropping. So we’re sort of into everything.’’
Working with whānau has enabled the couple to fulfil and even exceed their goals.
‘‘We’re part of a family farming operation with Ben’s parents,’’ says Gemma. ‘‘We’ve been really lucky to have the opportunity to be farming.’’
‘‘People really like the experience of coming out and seeing the flower farm and being able to pick their own things.’’ Gemma McDougall