Happy New Year. I’m back.

Things happen. Life changes. I’ve had a tough couple of years. The toughest ever. First there was the grief of my son leaving home and then I got long covid (and all the baggage that goes with that) and then, someone dumped all their rubbish on me and that was pretty catastrophic.

Suffering is inescapable. It’s a humbling human emotion that we can’t run from - though many try. Suffering forces you to reach out and connect with other humans. It gives you X-ray vision. You get to see right into people. You get to see the charlatans, the narcissists, the liars, the cowards, the self-deluders and the smiling assassins. Suffering brings out the best in the most ordinary of people. You really do find out who your friends are when the chips are down. And here’s another cliche: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But really, I didn’t need any of it.

Rubbish that someone dumped in QE Park near our house in Paekakariki.

Things got so bad last year that I couldn’t write my blog. I gave up the dream of growing cut flowers. Luckily I didn’t give up on gardening. I scaled it back. I potted.

It wasn’t all bad. Lots of good things and good people happened. I learnt to live in the present. I had to live in the present. It is, after all, the only place that’s real.

My daily runs along Paekakariki Beach with this guy kept me sane.

I’m looking forward to 2024, only because it isn’t 2023 or 2022. Although I did have a good simple Christmas with my beautiful family of 6 (husband, son, son’s girfriend and me and the two dogs). I hope you had a good Christmas too. But maybe you didn’t and that’s ok.

Here are some of the great things that’ve happened in the last few months.

My friend Sophie and I decided to open up a flower stall in a garage on Karori Road. We’d both talked about growing and selling flowers for years, but never thought it’d be possible. For starters neither of us owns an enormous block of land. But then we decided to give it a go. We have 3 suburban gardens between us, full of flowers. Lots of different kinds of cottage garden flowers.

So we did it. We made up bunches of flowers on a Friday afternoon and sold them on a Saturday morning. We did this for the first 3 Saturdays in December. It was, much to our surprise, a success. We even tried our hand at wreath making and sold a few of those too.

We now have a name. Karori Cottage Flowers. I would’ve liked something pretenious and artsy, but, when you’re as small an operation as us, your name needs to be informative.

Our profits are all going back into the business in the form of bulbs and corms and tubers. It’s so much fun. It’s one of the most fun things I’ve done in such a long time. And I’ve needed fun like a dog needs a Christmas-shaped dog biscuit.

The second thing that happened is my son’s gorgeous girlfriend. She made me a book for Christmas. A book about my blog. It was one of the sweetest, cleverest and most thoughtful things that happened in 2023. And because of her book I’m back here, writing. Thank you T, you’re wonderful.

The third thing that happened is that my husband is letting me extend the Karori garden. A little bit. I still have to leave some lawn in case we want to play badminton, which we never have (well maybe once or twice when my son was small), cause the wind is too strong and anyway, we don’t own badminton rackets or a shuttlecock.

So here I am. Back to writing about gardens and gardening. And now I’ll be writing about flower growing and harvesting and flower arranging. All very very exciting.

So what’s happening at the moment? I’m bringing the Karori garden back to it’s former glory. After 2 years of almost total neglect it requires major surgery. The neglect was down to me. I was supposed to be looking after the gardens while the house was rented out.

May 15, 2023. The one and only time I worked on the front garden in 2 years.

The garden didn’t care, it grew thick and wild. I feel like Mary Lennox in the secret garden. Most of the shrubs and perennials survived. I’m rediscovering plants I forgot about. The yellow achillea I grew from seed, all the Pemberton roses, rambling rector taking over a wild corner, the mock orange, a shrub that never flowered in the 8 years I’ve owned it (and now has buds), and a beautiful and unusual honesty, with purple flowers and darkly dappled leaves, which has self-seeded all over the place. I didn’t take any before photos so you’ll just have to imagine the wildness.

The first time this shrub has flower buds.

I’m weeding and pruning and culling and adding new plants and moving plants and mulching. Wellington City Council have warned us that we’ll have severe water restrictions this summer. There’ll be no outdoor water use, most likely. Terrible news for gardeners, and most especially flower growers in suburban gardens. Nearly 50% of Wellington’s water is lost because of the council’s leaky pipes. I could moan about this for several paragraphs, but I won’t. Lets just say I understand how farmers and crop growers feel about the whims of the weather.

Luckily summer hasn’t properly arrived in Wellington. It’s grey windy and wet most of the time.

I’m racing against the arrival of summer proper. I spend every day weeding and mulching while the soil is damp. I’ve planted lots of dahlias and chrysanthemums. And quite a few roses. I’m using the hose while I’m allowed to use it.

The side garden after I’ve weeded, pruned, fed and mulched.

The western corner of the back garden and a wonderful water tank from my friend Margaret.

The shop opens in 3 weeks and we need lots of flowers.

Here are some things I’ve discovered about growing cut cottage flowers:

People like buying small posies as much as the bigger bunches. There are many cottage flowers that don’t have long stems. Small posies are perfect for them.
It’s important to stay true to your style and values. In our case it’s simple bunches of real cottage flowers grown in real cottage gardens without sprays.
We don’t want to do weddings or functions.
Experiment and take risks because you never know.
You have to grow flowers differently in a proper garden (as opposed to a flower farm), but you can grow a lot more flowers than you think if you use space creatively.
A garden has microclimates. You can grow a huge variety of plants.
I’ve seen new uses for plants (and weeds) since getting into cut flower growing: oak tree for wreaths, sedum flowers for autumn colour, roses for posies and even pernicious weeds like dock have nice flowers (and it’s a natural dye). And then there’s all those vines that can be turned into wreaths while they’re supple.
Dried flowers are popular again. The trick is finding the ones you like the look of.
It’s a good excuse to buy a flower book and then another one and then another.
It’s a good excuse to buy vases and flower frogs.
Research and development is so much fun.
People love being given a bunch of cottage garden flowers.
Some flowers are beautiful at every stage, like scabiosa (beautiful buds, flowers and seed heads).
Poppies are easy to grow.
Tulips are more beautiful than I realised. They have so much personality. They die so flamboyantly. They grow really well in pots (for a season - and then plant them out in the garden and forget about them).
Providing you have an unheated glasshouse (or mini greenhouse) you can sow seeds all year round (obviously choosing the right seed for the right season).
Tall snapdragons are amazing. So are foxgloves.
Personally I love umbellifers and grow as many different kinds as I can. Parsley gone to seed looks stunning.
The perfect bunch of cottage flowers is like a bottle of wine. It should be the distillation of a place and a time.

2024 is where the sea meets the sky. It’s a horizon, a shimmering line to gaze at with wonder, an optical illusion. A place which exists, only in your imagination. Full of possibilities, and it’s the thinking of these possibilities that is so much fun. Ivory marigolds or yellow, cactus dahlias or decorative, tulips or daffodils or both.

See you in a week or two.