Nursery begins in red zone
A flower nursery in Linwood is the first commercial enterprise allowed in the Christchurch residential red zone.
Claire Maetzig signed a lease for three sections in March and has been creating a nursery and growing flowers on her Moon River Flower Farm since.
The ‘‘farmer and florist’’ sells cut flowers and bouquets to the public from her website when stock is available.
It’s still spring and the flower harvest so far has mostly been peony tulips. But she’s sown and planted larkspur, nigella, ranunculus, cornflower, ‘‘old-school romantic roses’’ and many others that will bloom over coming months and feed into her commercial business, she said.
It was the first commercial enterprise in the red zone, confirmed Toitu¯ Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (Linz) director Lydia Bloy.
Linz has signed small numbers of leases and licences for projects in the red zones and almost all have been community projects without an underlying profit motive.
There have been events and pop-ups in the red zone with commercial intent, but Maetzig has a three-year lease.
Maetzig’s been selling flowers and bouquets from her home garden for a few years, but didn’t have enough land to make it work at scale.
Maetzig’s flower aesthetic is country-cottage. Her bouquets ‘‘inspire a feeling of whimsy’’. She’s also trained in the Japanese flower arranging method ikebana. ‘‘It’s not a supermarket look,’’ she said.
‘‘I’m very focused on the seasons and what’s happening in nature now,’’ she said.
As summer brings more blooms to the Moon River site, Maetzig plans pick-your-own days and workshops on flowers, growing and arranging.
The Linwood soils were not ideal and she brought in about 75 cubic metres of soil and compost, arranged in long, mounded beds, and topped with a geotextile to suppress weeds. She farms ‘‘using organic principles to take the best care of the micro-organisms in the soil’’.