Season Sum-up for 2024-2025
Alpine Blooms farm is now entering their 6th year in business! It is absolutely crazy to think we started with 5 rows of blooms and absolutely no idea how this will work out. Now 5 years later we filled the flower plot to the brim with lovely flowers and shrubs and are looking forward to a new season full of locally grown goodness.
2024/2025 has been a wonderful season for us. Beautiful connections, local and international brides and absolute devotion from our wonderful florists! Devotion to local, sustainably grown and safe-for-handling produce. We loved every order, from little posies delivered to local households to trailer loads of greenery picked up by vanloads for big events. We also enjoyed a busy market season. Attended 4 markets and spread flowery goodness in our community.
Let’s recap this beautiful season!
2024 spring started off with a bang. It really was borderline hot all through October which wasn’t ideal as tulips opened way too fast and seedlings bolted in the tunnel house. We transplanted things and hoped for the best when frosts came in November. A lot of growers around the region felt Mother Nature’s freezing temperatures and lost their crop. We fought frosts with frost pods and covers but quite a few things didn’t make it and had to be replanted or pinched back which delayed their growth. We also had losses in peony rows as buds set and then got frosted and rotted off. And a couple of hail storms didn’t help the situation at all. Anyways we still ended up providing blooms to over 10 DIY weddings and countless florist orders. Attended Gather market and enjoyed extended peony season with help of Suzy Qs gardens who supplied her peonies to our lovely brides when we sold out. Overall it was a wild weather ride but we made it through relatively damage free compared to other growers in the region.
Then December rolled in and heralded summer! December is always a tricky month and we quite often don’t have many blooms available as spring blooms fade away and summer flowers are not quite ready. It is time when garden is extremely green. All the plants are at the almost bursting stage. It is probably the busiest time of the year as everything has to be planted and weeded and fertilized all at the same time and of course there are orders on top and Christmas madness looming. But it is always lovely to see the garden fully green and ready to burst!
Summer of 2025 was busy! We had markets (Upper Clutha Farmers market), and a sea of beautiful brides! We would love to say an absolute heartfelt thank you to all the brides and grooms who put their trust in us and our blooms. It was an honor! And a special mention goes to brides that decided to let us make their bouquets and wearables. We have created over 20 bouquets and buttonholes and some smaller installations for ceremony space. Each was truly unique and special, Thank you!
Our florists were very busy also and we barely kept up with all the gorgeous orders. With help of Studio24 and The Joy farmer we managed to send out many, many vanloads of blooms and foliage to Queenstown and Wanaka florists.
With March came cooler weather and a boom of dahlias which of course means we had beautiful truckloads of colour around the farm. In early March we had a wonderful opportunity to help with floral decoration of Wanaka A&P Show which was a crazy but wonderful experience on it’s own. Thank you very much to Kate from Pembroke Blooms for supplying some of the gorgeous dahlias to help bulk up our floral arrangements around the Showgrounds.
Weddings continued all the way into late April and we even had a couple of smaller elopements in May and June. We created bouquets, provided bucket loads of blooms and foliage and kept on going till frost took our blooms away. With frost things generally slow down a bit but this year frost didn’t come for a long time and we had dahlias and other tender blooms all the way into May! Which is unheard of. So we attended another market in April (Hawea Longview market) and kept on tidying up the flower field one row at a time. When fresh flowers were finally gone we turned to dried blooms which are carefully dried through the summer months and wait their turn in winter. Our dried bunches have been stocked up at On the Spot Northlake and have been selling well so far. We definitely need to dry more next season as we definitely won’t have enough to create wreaths and other little treasures for Summer markets ahead.
So as you can see overall it has been a very busy season full of beauty and colour. We loved growing or sourcing every bloom and hope to continue doing so for many more years to come. You might have noticed I have mentioned a few people in this newsletter. In 2025/2026 season we are hoping to create a wholesale part of the business that will source blooms from all growers around Wanaka and on sell to the florists in the district. This will not change how we operate for our brides and public but will hopefully create even more options for our florists and make ordering process a bit easier. If you are a florist and would like to receive a constant supply of local blooms (you must be able to pick-up from Wanaka), we would love to hear from you. Please email vera.yakzhik@gmail.com for details.
For now, this is it!
All the news and a quick rundown of our season. Thank you for reading and we hope to see some of you in September 2025 for some fresh spring blooms.
Alpine Blooms team
xoxo
