Hope-grown flowers head to Japan

Nestled away just off the main road of Hope is two hectares of carefully selected, high-quality flowers.

These flowers are grown to meet niche markets overseas, such as Japanese weddings and hotel foyers in the Unites States.

It is also home to the only commercially grown nerines, a lily-like flower native to South Africa, in New Zealand.

Richard and Sarah Mangin purchased the property 23 years ago and transformed it from horse paddocks to a productive flower farm.

“We didn’t have plans to put flowers in when we brought, we explored a range of options but being a small piece of land standard crops weren’t going to be viable,” Richard says.

“There was good logic behind the flower market when we looked into it.”

Due to the climate and location the flowers grown are available on the market when other flower growers are not producing, therefore fitting into niche market windows.

The couple, being the only workers on the farm, have cleverly set the property up to allow themselves a summer and winter break.

The cut flower export market for New Zealand sits around $16m annually, which is down from $19m pre-Covid levels.

“Worldwide, Covid lockdowns really affected us,” says Sarah.

“In the big lockdown in 2020 we were mid harvest for our nerines, with no planes flying we had no choice but to take to them with the scrub cutter. It was heart-breaking and we received no compensation for a crop that usually produces us 80,000 high-quality stems for export.”

The couple report that the demand for their nerines (colours whites, pinks, salmons) have recently returned to pre-Covid levels.

Hellebores (winter roses) and a selection of proteas (a South African flowering shrub, also called sugarbushes) are also grown on the farm.  

Proteas date back around 300 million years and are considered to be amongst the oldest families of flowering plants on the planet.

In South Africa proteas symbolize diversity, change and courage. Richard and Sarah’s proteas are around twenty years old and have a wide variety, including the very popular, and stunning, white king protea. The increased unpredictable weather events affected them last year for the first time ever.

“Proteas don’t like wet feet, they can die quickly if their roots sit in waterlogged or wet ground too long,” Richard says.

“Last winter, for the first time ever, parts of our property went under water from the build-up of the constant rain we had received. The water sat around for a few weeks, it wasn’t a good time.”

Luckily, the valuable plants survived and surprisingly bounced back well.

The flowers are exported to a range of countries including Asia, Japan, and the USA.

Richard and Sarah hand-pick all the flowers, then package them carefully in a way that the delicate blooms will survive their journey undamaged. They are then delivered to Auckland and sent on to expecting countries from there.

It’s an amazing thought to think that 9,346km away in Japan, or even further 12,535km away in the States, fresh flowers that were grown locally in Hope are being admired, enjoyed, or put to use in stunning works of floral art.

“We enjoy growing things, so this suits us,” Richard says.

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“Flower farming has given us an amazing lifestyle. When the kids were younger, we were able to be there after school. Our kids enjoyed sailing and we were able to make time to regularly sail as a family which was really neat. We are also in a great location being walking distance to Richmond, you can’t really ask for much more.”

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