Like lots of people, I fell into teaching. I fell into it because what I studied, a Bachelor in Graphic Design (majoring in illustration) and a half finished four year Fine Arts Degree, weren’t what you might call Vocational. I needed a job and teaching was that job. I did some other things along the way, while I was teaching. I got married and had a son. We bought a house. I took up gardening. We moved house a couple of times. I did a Master’s in Creative Writing at Victoria. I fantasised about being a full time writer. That never happened. I kept on teaching. I drew, I painted, I took photos. I gardened. I did an awful lot of gardening. For many years I wrote a gardening blog.

And then my son grew up and I was still teaching. For years I kept telling people I would give up teaching as soon as my son finished school. It took two years for me to make good.

And it’s thanks to my friend Sophie that Karori Cottage Flowers became a thing. And then it became a business. And finally I found a way to quit teaching for good.

Karori Cottage Flowers came before Kāpiti Cottage Flowers. Sophie and I started this in December 2023.

We were gardeners who loved growing and arranging flowers. We’d talked about selling cut flowers lots and lots of times. One day we gave it a go.

We set up a table outside my garage on Karori Road (that was before we turned the garage into a shop - back in December 2023 it had 18 years worth of family stuff crammed into every available space and a vespa). Luckily it was a fine still day, that first day we sold our flowers, because we didn’t have any shelter. And we found out soon enough how wild the Wellington weather can get, and what this does to a bunch of flowers in a glass jar.

People actually bought our bunches of flowers. Lots of them. We were so surprised. We felt like imposters. We weren’t florists. We didn’t even know how to wrap a bunch of flowers in paper. Luckily one of our customers showed us how to do it. She’d worked at a florist shop when she was a student.

We felt like imposters because our flowers were grown in suburban gardens not professionally grown in tunnel houses or on flower farms. We were amateurs and it was only a matter of time before we got found out. A bunch of our flowers looked completely different from a bunch of flowers from a florist or supermarket. They looked hand made, whimsical, homey. Our flowers had wiggly stems that didn’t behave. We didn’t spiral our flowers because of the wiggly stems and the varying stem lengths. And because we didn't know how. So, we arranged the flowers in jars and vases. Just like we did at home.

Back then we had 3 gardens between us. Sophie had one I had two. One in Paekakariki and one in Karori. Let’s just say having two houses and two gardens was never part of the plan. When you don’t buy and sell at the same time and the house market dies because of a covid pandemic, plans change.

Sophie and I ran our business for a year. It closed at the beginning of January 2025. It closed because my family sold our Karori home and moved back up to Paekakriki, which was always the plan.

I’m down to one garden. And Karori Cottage Flowers has become Kāpiti Cottage Flowers. And it’s run by me.

Every week I’ll post the latest news about Kāpiti Cottage Flowers. You can follow it here, on my website. You’ll be able to read about how I grow flowers intensively in a small garden. Autumn and Winter are busy times for flower growers, so there’s lots going on. You’ll be able to follow the design side of my business. How I decorate wrapping paper, make ribbons and print greeting cards.

Here’s what’s been happening in the last couple of weeks.

I’ve been rearranging my raised beds and assembling 3 new ones. in the back garden. This has involved a wheelbarrow and a lot of soil shovelling. So much digging and shifting that my shovel broke.

I started a shady garden on the southern side of the house. A place for hydrangeas and hellebores. I sowed hundreds of seeds and potted on dozens of seedlings. I ordered a whole lot of spring bulbs and bought lots of packets of seeds.

I bought a printing press.

Last year I made lots of lino prints and turned them into cards. I made a new one every season. I printed each one by hand using the back of a spoon. This was very time consuming, especially if it was a two-colour print. I’m going to start designing this year’s Autumn card this weekend.

Next week I’m going to work on ‘The Driveway Garden’. In 2022 we paid this fencer to build us some fences and make a driveway. This was during covid. Let’s just say he ripped us off. He was a cowboy. The fences are falling over, his gates don’t hang properly and the driveway had to be dug up. I heard his business went into liquidation.

I planted The Driveway Garden a year and a half ago. It’s done really well. But lots of it is going to have to be dug up to make way for all the flowers I’m growing in the greenhouse. And some lilies and lots of dahlias.

Watch this space.