A Creative Career Blooms on the Coast

When Phoebe Walker swapped the classroom for a coastal flower field, she found a way to keep her creativity blooming—while building a lifestyle that works for her family.

Phoebe launched Flowers by Phoebe after relocating from Wellington five years ago. What started with digging up the lawn at their Reefton home has grown into a thriving small business based on a 0.8-hectare property in Paroa, just south of Greymouth.

She now grows and hand-picks seasonal bunches to sell both to order and from a roadside flower shed on State Highway 6, where customers pay via honesty box or bank transfer. Alongside this, she also runs art and flower arranging workshops and is a marriage celebrant—blending her love of creativity and connection.

“We loved it. It’s a really cool place to live,” says Phoebe, who moved to the Coast when her police officer partner got a secondment in Reefton. “I couldn’t believe how good it was just for that lifestyle with kids—it’s a beautiful community.”

Inspired by the idea of creating a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle, Phoebe began growing flowers and selling simple bunches to friends—including Valentine’s bouquets and weekly arrangements for the local pub.

When her partner transferred to Greymouth, the couple bought a coastal property and began converting an old sheep paddock into a flower field. “It’s been quite a lot of trial and error,” she says. “We are very close to the sea, so it needed a lot of organic matter and things added to get the sandy soil growable. I grew all year last year which is pretty cool.”

Phoebe spent time connecting with other growers around Aotearoa, learning what worked in coastal environments. “There’s such a lot of difference growing in one area to another,” she says. “My mother has a garden in Canterbury and I tried to grow different things from her garden and they just gave up here.”

“I found some growers in coastal parts of the North Island like Waiheke Island have similar conditions to here.”

Now, with 12 garden beds covering 600m², Phoebe fills her flower shed each weekend with seasonal bunches—around 10 per week—and takes custom orders for larger bouquets and weddings.

“I was unsure how big the market would be but it has just been incredible the number of people stopping for flowers,” she says. “I have a kind of a unique niche here because there are no other locally grown flowers in the market.”

Phoebe describes her arrangements as intentionally natural. “I don’t have floristry training. My flowers have character,” she says. “I create bunches using colour palettes and based on how they look in vases. I love long stems and flowers of different heights. Aesthetically, they are asymmetric like what you would find in the garden.”

She says people appreciate that her flowers look “quite different” because they’re picked fresh—often the morning or evening before being sold.

With three young children (aged 6, 4, and 1), Phoebe values the flexibility the business brings. “They help me in the garden—it’s definitely a family effort,” she says.

As for her favourite bloom? “It’s too hard. I love dahlias—they are a work horse. Every month different flowers are opening up and I think how can I live without these.”