Down to earth

 

There is always something to do on John and Penny Trubshaws’ intensively planted holding. John works full-time producing cut flowers and foliage for the export industry while Penny, a floristry training adviser for the New Zealand Horticulture Industry Training Organisation, travels to florist shops all over the country, training and assessing staff. She still does professional floristry work “to keep my hand in” and is thrilled that her 17-year-old granddaughter is learning the art.

John is a perfectionist, says Penny, and was always a keen gardener. There’s not much time for gardening these days but you can see what he has been up to as you walk around their 3ha gently undulating Bay of Plenty grounds. Neat rows of shrubs snake up the rise into the distance – proteas, viburnum, brachyglottis, pierris, leucadendron, pittosporum; some in flower, some pruned back to encourage the next crop. There is a tonne of work going on here.

 

The Trubshaws have been in the growing business for 13 years. They were originally dairy farmers at Matangi, followed by a stint growing strawberries before they bought a florist shop in Tauranga.

“That’s what made us decide to grow cut foliage,” says Penny. During this time they discovered king proteas (Protea cynaroides), the national flower of South Africa, at a flower show and they’ve grown them ever since. At first they planted the pink form – there are many variations – but later they found that the white-flowered variety fetched three times as much per stem. Out came the pinks.

 

It might sound idyllic, picking these grand white flowers and packing them for sale, but one look at the two-metre-high rows upon rows of “kings” soon dispels that notion. The flower market industry requires proteas with straight stems and, to satisfy this requirement, John grows them just over one metre long. To do this, each stem is disbudded and twisted around a string attached to an overhead wire. This has to be done every fortnight and it takes three days to go through the block. “It’s time-consuming,” says John, “but, once you get the strings on, it’s just a matter of winding them.”

In the packing shed, John demonstrates the art of preparing flowers for long-distance travel. Though he has worked on another flower-growing property, he developed the packaging method himself. Each flower is carefully rolled in a piece of Tetron packing material before being placed in a box. This ensures the flower arrives at its destination in perfect condition. “He does everything. I’m not good enough,” says Penny, laughing.

 

A courier takes the order to Auckland, where the flowers pass through an export firm; most then fly to Japan for auction, but only the very best. The blooms that don’t make the grade are sold locally – corporate and work events love them. Penny reckons she gets the “thirds” for her own use if she’s lucky “and even then I just about have to plead for them”.

The Trubshaws grow other crops too. Last year they picked 25,000 stems of Viburnum opulus ‘Sterile’ (well-known as the snowball tree), which went to Japan. Viburnum has to be graded for flower count as well as stem length and, because they have no permanent staff, they had to get five workers in to help them pick for that busy job. In fact, they’re always busy: three varieties of pierris ensure a continual flowering sequence and they are trialling Brachyglottis ‘Otari Cloud’ because there’s a demand from florists for the cut stems.

 

Though they’re aware of trends, the couple don’t always feel they can predict the next big thing in flowers. Says John: “You don’t know what the fashion is going to be.”