10 April 2025
Wild for Flowers
Mano Whenua. Heartland.
writer: AS TOLD TO CLAIRE WILLIAMSON
photographer: Francine Boer
Emilie Bean, 46, has spent the past four years growing her cut flower business – The Arrowtown Flower Company – and supplying local blooms around Kā-Muriwai Arrowtown. More than a luxury, they are a way for Emilie to create connection and mark special occasions through beauty.
“Literally everything just goes in the garden,” says Emilie. “So in some areas, there’s no stepping stones or pathways, and harvest becomes quite a bit of a mission.”
We had a lovely garden growing up. Dad – he is a retired pharmacist – is quite a horticulturalist. In the eighties, he decided, with two other families, to get together and invest in some paddocks and convert the space to a nashi orchard, which was probably quite ahead of its day. I would often be out at the orchard with Dad, helping with pruning and harvesting – I became almost like his little sidekick.
I had been living overseas for a number of years before I came back. I was turning thirty, and I was like, “Right, this is my last opportunity to apply for a visa to live in Canada and work another ski season.” I actually ended up staying on for a second season at that particular resort in Canada, and met my now-husband. After travelling back to New Zealand in pursuit of settling for the long term, we were wondering where to live and wanted somewhere that had more of a heart, had a little pub that we could walk to and had a community around it. Arrowtown hit everything on the head. I ended up getting a job with a tourism operator.
World events took a bit of a turn at the beginning of 2020. I decided it was time for me to look for something else – my opportunity to exit stage left. I am connected with a local winery owner here, and all of their pickers were stranded. So I decided I’d go and help harvest. It was an absolute revelation. I was out every morning in the crisp autumn dawn; the light was phenomenal. It was quite intense labour, but really rewarding, because you can see what’s being achieved.
Driving to these vineyards from Arrowtown through to Bannockburn and Cromwell, I started listening to podcasts. I discovered a whole rabbit warren of podcasts around flower farming, which, until this point, I had no idea was even a thing. That winter, I just delved into investigating flowers, and did heaps of research and set up a little brand.
Continue reading the full story in our Ngahuru Autumn 2025 Edition.
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This story appeared in the Ngahuru Autumn 2025 Edition of Shepherdess.
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