How I became... a rose grower

Two decades after leaving her job to set up a horticultural business - while having unexpected triplets - Barbara Kurmann can finally sit back and smell her 18,000 roses.

"We were getting a bit claustrophobic in the city and wanted to go somewhere where we could run our lifestyle in our own time, and not be governed by other people. I worked as a PA at Mitre 10’s head office on Auckland’s North Shore and my husband Joe was a motor mechanic.

"We bought an ideal spot just south of Leigh and then had to decide how to make it work. What to grow was the hard decision. I did a horticulture course to try and get some ideas. We considered tomatoes and cucumbers. After a lot of research we settled on roses because of their quite high return per square metre and they’re a crop we knew we’d never tire of. But it was such a large outlay. Once we were committed we had to make it work. We always knew we would succeed because we believed in ourselves.

"Three months after we moved to the site, I had triplet daughters! It was quite a shock but our wonderful staff and friends got us through that extremely busy patch and everything seems like a breeze now. But we still need to push ourselves hard and stay focused on why we decided to get into growing in the first place. You always have downfalls – you do in anything – but we are in control and if we make mistakes, they are our mistakes and we usually just make them the once!

"We don’t employ staff any more as we are boutique enough to do everything ourselves. We sell an average of 5000 stems a week from October to May and winter is for pruning and dead wooding. We also do the office work, picking, bunching, weeding and delivering to the floral department of Turners and Growers. 

"Roses need constant de-budding and spraying and we’re often bleeding after being scratched by the thorns, but the end product is worth the slog. After a hard day in the hot house we cool off with a nice swim.

"The highlight of our week is when the cooler is full of bunched roses ready for sale. There is nothing more satisfying when all the jobs are done and we are ready for the fun part. This is selling to our lovely customers, many of whom have become our friends, at the wonderful weekend markets at Matakana and Whangarei.

"People who buy our roses are either off somewhere nice taking flowers as a gift or wanting to cheer someone up. We’ve been going so long now we’re getting second generation brides buying their wedding flowers! Even flowers for funerals are special as people try to reflect their loved one’s personalities in the flowers they select.

"I feel so good that we can make a positive difference to people’s lives and what fun it is celebrating all their milestones."

Photograph and interview by Rosalind Le Bas Walker