Flowers cross the digital divide

Julia Atkinson-Dunn has no desire to grow for anything more than her own garden, but she has been swept up as a spectator of flower farmers.

Right from the beginning of my own gardening adventure, flowers were a strong focus. In my hunt for information that matched my enthusiasm, I was lucky to stumble across the books, website and Instagram feed of Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower Farm in Washington State.

From her advice across a rainbow of delightful annuals and perennials, I was able to glean everything I needed to get growing flowers with confidence in my garden – for beauty and to satiate my need for picking.

As a side effect, I was also exposed to the concept of flower farming. Benzakein’s farming courses sell out in minutes to growers from every corner of the globe, hungry to learn the skills needed for growing blooms at scale, and how to form a sustainable small business from doing so.

Despite no desire to grow commercially, I have been swept up as a spectator of the movement, intrigued by the possibilities of turning seasonal flowers into a livelihood.

I have also seen family members give it a go. During our first lockdown last year, my cousin Sarah Rutherford decided to sow her first commercial crop of flowers at her family’s farm in Tarras, Central Otago.

Now in her second season, her business, The Joy Farmer, sees her selling bunches at a roadside stall. As part of a newly formed collective with three other local growers, she also supplies flowers and foliage to florists in the Southern Lakes region.

Other cousins, Guy and Tracey Atkinson of The Peony People in Rakaia, Canterbury, were preparing to harvest their first crops of peonies. They started from scratch, in flower growing and in promoting their product.

Both of these new businesses have used social media as their primary method of establishing their markets. While commercial flower auction houses certainly have an important function, social platforms like Facebook and Instagram have allowed small, independent farmers to find their customers – florists and the public – and encourage the news of their offerings to spread among likeminded people.

This is word of mouth, albeit a much faster, ‘‘clickable’’ digital version, game-changer for any emerging business.

It was by following local florist Alicia Erceg of Bunch Floral on social media that I learned about the flower farmer Anna Wilkinson.

At 24 years old, armed with a Bachelor of Commerce and Masters of International Relations, Wilkinson assumed she would be overseas by now.

Instead, she finds herself immersed in flowers from dawn to dusk – maintaining, propagating and harvesting.

She grew up in a farming family, and a few years ago her parents found their way to a fourhectare block in West Melton, just outside Christchurch.

Her mother, a keen gardener with a love of propagating, established a small cutting patch on the property and news of this soon leaked to a handful of eager florists who began to visit for hard-to-find blooms.

Another opportunity popped up when they spotted a local property sporting thousands of hydrangeas.

Formerly grown as an export crop on leased land, the landowners had continued to keep the plants alive after the business owner moved on. The Wilkinsons decided to take up the lease and over three years worked at restoring the plants to productive health.

While still finishing her studies, Wilkinson took up the reins of marketing the blooms on social media as Canterbury Hydrangeas. Now, having handed in her dissertation at the start of the year, the increasing demand for their flowers has led to a bold expansion of the planting and their business, with Wilkinson at the helm.

The sheer volume of hydrangeas, and admin, means they are mostly sold nationwide through the traditional auction house model. But to manage the demand for their other boutique, garden-style blooms, the Wilkinsons have created a closed group called The Florist’s Pantry, allowing a limited number of florists the opportunity to visit and harvest their own flowers on demand.

Erceg, who has been part of The Florist’s Pantry, says she has learned more about the seasonal cycle of the flowers she uses, and found exciting creative opportunities in experimenting with foliage that might otherwise be discarded, as well as suggesting plants the Wilkinsons could grow. The ongoing trade of their crafts simply strengthens both businesses.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson couldn’t be further removed from where she thought she would be.

‘‘I love working for myself,’’ she tells me. ‘‘I’m 24, all my friends work corporate jobs and I play in the field with the flowers.

‘‘But that comes with the commitment of sustaining a small business, and really not a lot of ‘off time’. If I’m not there to make it happen, it won’t happen.

‘‘I don’t mind this though, and I never really consider my work ‘work’, I just consider my life as really lovely.’’

‘‘I’m 24, all my friends work corporate jobs and I play in the field with the flowers.’’ Anna Wilkinson, above and below