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Claire Gallagher has started her own blooming business, growing her own flowers and selling them in bunches from a vintage bicycle she parks around New Plymouth.
New Plymouth woman Claire Gallagher has taken an overgrown section and an old bicycle and turned it into a blooming good business.
Gallagher runs Ferndale Flowers in New Plymouth, a small business that each day sells a handful of bouquets of homegrown blooms from an unmanned and stationary bicycle.
Though she grew up around gardening and had always had fruit trees and grown vegetables, the flower business idea only began to bud a couple years ago.
“I thought flowers were really hard,” the mother-of-three said.
“But last year I gave it a go and really loved it, picking them and giving them to friends.”
Most of the flowers come from her own “secret garden” – an area she and her husband discovered nine years ago after buying the house.
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She turned an overgrown section at the top of her property into her flower garden.
It was completely overgrown, but they tamed it and it’s now a hotbed of colour.
It was last winter, while working full time as a resource teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing, Gallagher began learning how to make her garden really bloom. She devoured every gardening podcast and book she could get her hands on to become better at the craft.
Eventually she decided to put herself and her flowers “out there” and start selling them.
“If you don’t start, you don’t do anything,” she said.
“Even if it fails, it fails. What a good example for my children that some things don’t work, and you get back up.”
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Gallagher has only been growing flowers for a year.
But as they live at the end of a cul-de-sac, Gallagher said there wasn’t much foot traffic, so she thought about how else she could set up a shop.
She had a vintage bike in the garage which she got for free through Facebook with the idea of doing up and going biking with the kids, which never happened.
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“I saw something on Pinterest and thought I could do that, wheel it somewhere and park it and see what happens.”
She started putting the bike out in different spots around her neighbourhood, running an honesty box system for $20 a bunch.
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The bike runs on an honesty box system for $20 a bunch. You can pay in cash or by online bank deposit.
Most days the bike can be found around Frankleigh Park outside the Govett Ave shops or in Westown.
She plans to set up another vintage bike, which she’ll base on the corner of Waimea and Tukapa streets.
Each day she usually puts out four bouquets and the week before Christmas she sold out nearly every day.
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The mum-of-three said her family are so encouraging of her and always celebrate when she makes a sale.
Gallagher grows a bit of everything including dahlias, scabiosa, cosmos, canna lilies, sunflowers, and hydrangeas.
Her favourite flower is dahlias, which she says are all the rage at the moment.
All her blooms are spray free, and she uses permaculture and no dig principles.
“My husband and my children are all really encouraging and have a lot of ideas.
“Every time we get a sale, we all do a little happy dance, like this is so cool.”
