GROW YOUR OWN DECORATIONS
After being enticed by her elegant edibles at the Ozone Bean Store, VIRGINIA WINDER got to visit this blooming baker’s home garden.
It’s about 4am and Kirsty Jones lies awake dreaming of what cake to create next.
‘‘You have got flavours and flowers going through your mind and when they’re mixed together, and you create something that no one’s ever heard of, it’s quite nice,’’ the New Plymouth woman says.
Using her background as a florist, her love of gardening and passion for baking, Jones has formed a business called The Cake Diary.
The mother of four boys, aged 3, 6, 9 and 10, only works school and kindergarten hours, but can potter in the garden when they’re home.
In between times, she works hard baking cakes and decorating them with edible flowers grown in the Govett Ave garden.
‘‘Sometimes I do have to get up at 4.30 in the morning,’’ she says. ‘‘Either I wing it or am really organised, it depends on how much sleep has been had.’’
Husband Craig, the creative director of Strategy Collective, is extremely supportive of her efforts.
When she works on a Saturday morning, he will take the boys on an outing to the beach or somewhere else fun.
Alongside The Cake Diary, Jones grows flowers for posies. Many of these are sold at the gate by her kids. One of the boys was five when he made a killing. ‘‘He sat out there and made $60 in half an hour. He made a good cut of that,’’ she says.
Jones was more disciplined in her first job selling flowers. When she was in Year 13 at school, she had two jobs – one at McDonalds and the other at Jasmine Florist in Fitzroy with Rosalie Bennett and Judy Williams.
Her flower career bloomed and Jones was fortunate to get jobs with different florists and be given opportunities.
Then it was time to open her own business, which she did for three years on her own before deciding to have a family.
‘‘While popping out the four boys the love of gardening grew. When you have children, you start to notice what’s going in their mouths, so you grow your own veggies and you grow your own flowers,’’ she says.
‘‘I love the challenge of growing the edible flowers without using sprays. I like the flowers in their natural state without being messed with.’’
Her love of gardening stems from her mother and grandmother, who were both rose fans. ‘‘So, my mother always had us learning rose names.’’
The older women also inspired Jones with their baking.
On the bench is a Christmas cake that began as her mother’s recipe, but has been adapted, Jones-style. The round, moist cake is laced with a sticky strawberry, cinnamon and brandy syrup and decorated with pistachios and cornflower petals.
She uses test-of-time recipes from the likes of Holst, Mary Berry, Maggie Beer and Jo Seagar, then gives them her own twist.
The offerings come with long, exotic names, like lemon syrup cakes with white chocolate buttercream and rosemary lemon curd, or blackberry and sage double dark chocolate mousse cake or banana medjool date cakes with coconut fluff and toasted buckwheat brittle.
All these cakes are cooked in the Jones’ immaculate kitchen, which got council approval to be used for the business in March last year.
Now, Jones says she’s living the dream. ‘‘I have got a job that pays for my garden – who can say that?’’
Below the house is a healthy patch of alpine strawberries. These white berries are left by the birds, are sweet, tart and hidden under leaves. The leaves become cake decorations in winter and the berries and flowers also get a showing.
These were recommended by property consultant Green Bridge, which did a garden plan for Jones.
Nearby are hellebores, which she doesn’t use on cakes. Now.
In her earlier days of combining baking and blooms, she used the winter rose on a cake, only to learn it was poisonous.
These days she is committed to only using edible flowers on her cakes and the rest are picked for posies.
One of her mainstays is the friendly faced pansy. These are growing throughout her garden, gathered in groups of the same colour having their own ‘‘pansy party’’.
‘‘The awesome thing with pansies is you can dead head them really well and they will be back the next week.’’
In a corner of the garden is an area packed with goodies, including aquilegia, a blood orange, hydrangeas, nasturtiums, a pomegranate, raspberries, boysenberries, a fig tree, elderflowers and pineapple sage.
She picks a feijoa flower, which she thinks is gorgeous and great for decorations, particularly at Christmas time.
Moving on, there are four sturdy raised beds packed with veggies, herbs and flowers. The ones by the expanse of lawn have been raised a bit higher to be ball proof.
The hedge by the neighbour’s place isn’t boy-proof though. One day, Jones was gardening at home and turned around to find one of her older sons with the hedge clippers. ‘‘He had made a hole in the hedge for the neighbour to come through. Carol is nearly 70, so he was just being very thoughtful.’’
In the raised beds are dual pears and dual apples, which means each tree sports two different varieties of fruit.
She went to a pruning workshop with Vince Naus from Big Jim’s and learnt that if you have a fruit tree only producing on one side, you cut the good side back hard and both sides will come away. That worked with her trees.
In the last bed, there is an array of peony poppies in all colours.
There is so much to see in these beds – flowers from crimson broad beans, asparagus peas and radishes, ornamental carrots and chocolate coloured and smelling cosmos. Wine coloured zinnias are tucked behind, black-red dahlias are wow inspiring and a strawberry variety doesn’t fruit but produces pink flowers.
Then there are the roses. In a raised bed is a cerise and white rose called Guy Savoy and, supported by bamboo tepees near the house, are pure pink rose Cup Cake and red-orange to pink Benjamin Britten.
A sun-yellow Graham Thomas stands by the house and around the corner is a slow-growing cream-and-pink climber, Pierre de Ronsard. There’s also Souvenir de Madame Leonie Viennot, which Jones saw at Chris Paul and Kevin Wensor’s Tainui Close during the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular.
There are hundreds more flowers in this garden, but as we head inside it’s leaves she picks. These lemon, rose and peppermint geraniums are infused to make syrups and icings.
She hands fragrant leaves to the photographer and writer, who breathe deeply and then head inside for Christmas cake.
You have got flavours and flowers going through your mind...
Kirsty Jones