Homeschooling project turns into a PYO dahlia farm business for three sisters

For three enterprising young Northland sisters, their childhood gardening project is running a pick-your-own dahlia farm. And we say “running” we do mean running.

Though they are guided by mum Jen Ives, 12-year-old Milly, 10-year-old Gracie and 8-year-old Lexi Leong are all actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the farm and make the strategic decisions, as part of their homeschooling.

Not only do the sisters grow the dahlias from seed, they do all the planting, weeding and deadheading, as well as hosting customers, giving them tours and highly informed talks on dahlia growing, when they open for pick-your-own days over summer.

In the off-season, they make plans for improving and growing the business from their lifestyle property Green Footed Kiwi, a former Girl Guide Camp near Kaikohe.

It all started in 2019. As a home school project, Jen, a teacher in her previous life, gave the girls $100 to encourage them to learn about money, and how it might be put toward starting a business.

Though their education is largely free of technology, Gracie spied some dahlias on a Facebook page one day when mum was online and fell in love with the brightly coloured blooms. She spent $100 on buying 10 potted dahlia plants.

Though only three bloomed from that first bunch, Grace entered them in the local Kaikohe A&P show and walked away with three first prizes.

Wanting to help ensure Gracie got more return on her flower investment, Jen spread the word on social media, asking for advice on growing dahlias and if there was a local growers club where the family could learn more.

The callout came to the attention of then National Dahlia Society of New Zealand president Dennis Rodgers, who did far more than connect the girls with a club. He sent them dahlia seeds to sow and followed that up by travelling to Northland to give the sisters lessons in how to successfully grow and maintain the flowers.

They’ve barely looked back. Since those first seeds, the family’s dahlia crop has blossomed into about 3000 plants, and their plans for their business have grown and grown alongside the expanding garden.

“The first year we didn’t really know what we were doing, but we learned a lot,” Milly says.

“We learned not to plant dahlias in a swamp, for example,” adds Gracie somewhat wryly, recalling their first attempt to plant in an area of the property they hadn’t realised was rather boggy.

Though that first-year crop produced just 12 dahlias, the family pressed on, gradually broadening the scope of their plans as the number of dahlias they grew increased.

“At the start we thought we’d probably just sell the flowers on the side of the road,” Gracie says, but the family started to realise the idyllic country setting of their property, and the fact they were growing dahlias from seed, meant they could offer people something unique.

Milly explains: “Because all our dahlias are grown from seed which don’t grow true to the form, each flower we grow is completely unique and different.”

The girls recognised that uniqueness could make a pick-your-own dahlia experience particularly enjoyable for visitors, particularly in the bush-side setting of Green Footed Kiwi.

“So many of our visitors come out for the dahlias but end up staying longer, just to enjoy the peace and quiet of the place,” Jen says. That led to the introduction of high teas last summer, which not only boosted income, but gave the sisters some good lessons in the complexities of meeting food hygiene regulations and the economics of making a good scone.

“We found people enjoyed sitting around soaking up the peace and quiet, and chatting to the girls so much we were giving them coffee and cake anyway,” she says.

The high teas went so well, the sisters are planning to expand on the concept with a purpose-built high tea building, due to open in time for this summer. They’ve also conducted a family bake-off with each sister trying a different recipe to find the most cost-effective, yet still delicious scone, working out exactly how much it costs them to produce each one.

Green Footed Kiwi has now successfully hosted two summers of pick-your-own dahlias, opening the garden every weekend, typically from December through to early May.

Though the family was frustrated their 2022-23 season was cut short by the ever-present rain that plagued much of the North Island, they used the time to work on new ideas and new projects that will allow visitors a more immersive experience at the farm, and the opportunity to enjoy the unique, peaceful surroundings.

First on the agenda is a butterfly garden to provide a home for the monarch butterflies as well as the bumblebees that flock to the dahlias. “The butterflies aren’t just here in the dahlia season and we don’t have enough other flowers at the moment to sustain them past the end of the dahlias,” Jen says.

So the family is now all signed up as members of the Butterflies and Moths of NZ Trust to become butterfly garden experts and have started collecting cuttings of butterfly-friendly plants such as hydrangeas, broome and camellias. “Lexi’s going to be our monarch butterfly expert, taking people through the garden to talk about the butterflies and chrysalises, and why they’re important,” Jen adds.

First up though, new pathways and clearly identified parking areas and entrances for customers are underway to improve the flow of people through the gardens, and help make pick-your-own days less labour intensive.

“We were finding the girls were spending a lot of time having to run over to greet people when they arrived to guide them to the right place for the dahlias,” says Jen, adding that there are other decisions to be made about where the girls want to put their focus for the ongoing success of the business.

“You have to be really mindful of work hours versus enjoyment hours,” she says. A fact that’s particularly true now she has a baby son, Barnaby, with partner Simon who also lives at the farm, lending his expertise to the dahlia operations by constructing new buildings and fences.

At the height of the season, the girls are in the garden every day for a few hours, “usually deadheading so the plants keep replenishing”, Milly says. “But the worst job is probably weeding, which is mostly just pulling out paspalum heads and kikuyu grass.”

With that desire to reduce their levels of intensive labour in mind, this year, for the first time, the girls have made the decision to leave their dahlias in the ground over winter instead of pulling them up.

“We’ve cut them down and covered them in weedmat, so the water doesn’t get into the tuber,” Milly explains. “It’s an experiment that might save us a lot of work.”

And, adds Jen, the work is so time-consuming, “it’s not really financially viable to keep doing it by hand.”

The family is also considering whether to focus on being dahlia breeders, working to produce perfect, show-quality flowers, or keep growing the flowers their customers love from seed. “They’re often not the same thing. A lot of people like the slightly odd or imperfect flowers,” Jen says.

“So we’re starting to think about why we are doing this. What is our purpose? And that will have an effect on how we manage things in the future. The girls’ education is at the core of all this, so our conversations are about what works and doesn’t work for the business, and how to add value.”

The family is also starting to think about where the skills and knowledge they’re acquiring might take them, because as well as horticultural, they’re learning marketing, hospitality, animal care and conservation.

Gracie has also become a skilled photographer and has taken all the photos in a book the sisters put together over the unusually wet summer, which they’re intending to self-publish. “It’s a bit about growing dahlias from seed and what we’ve learned along the way,” Milly says. “And about us and what we’re doing, as well as a bit of history of this place and the bush.”

There are also plans for beehives to experiment with dahlia honey, and there are onsite cabins in the property’s native bush they’d like to offer as overnight accommodation for paying guests. With kiwi onsite, as well as kauri snails and even a large native passionfruit, Jen would like to extend their conservation and pest control efforts, and include opening up areas of the bush to visitors in future business plans.

For the moment the focus is on the coming dahlia season. “The days generally start with a conversation about what we’re doing that day, how we’re going to do it, and who is going to do what to get it done,” Jen says. “We’re always in the garden together. It’s where we start conversations and start coming up with plans and solutions.

“But I’m really there as the chief motivator. It’s the girls’ business. That’s what makes it special. People come to pick the dahlias but they also see the girls actively working in the business. We get a lot of compliments about their knowledge and their ability to share it.”