Valentine’s Day feature24 Mahurangimatters February 3, 2016

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As Valentine’s Day approaches, flower sellers are gearing up for one of their busiest weeks of the year. Last year in New Zealand, spending at florists increased by more than 150 per cent in the week leading up to February 14, with love struck – or duty-bound – romantics forking out more than $3 million on flowers alone.And there’s little doubt that the bulk of that massive spend will have gone on the eternal flower of romance, the rose, some of which will have come from Joe and Barbara Kurmann’s Whangateau Roses.The couple have been growing around 20 varieties of roses at their hilltop Coxhead Creek property since moving up from Auckland in search of a rural life 25 years ago.“When we came up, there was a house and an existing 700 square metre shade house,” Barbara says. “We were trying to figure out what we could do so that we didn’t have to leave home to work. So we thought, ‘let’s grow flowers’.”After completing a horticultural course and looking at all the options, export roses seemed to offer the best returns. Unfortunately, over the next five years, and after the Kurmanns had invested in 18,000 bushes, high

Business is blooming for local rose growers

tech equipment and 10 to 15 staff, the export market crumbled as other countries muscled in. It was a grim time, and almost spelled the end of the budding business.“We were very new with little experience,” Joe says. “We had to downsize and lost all our staff. We even looked to sell the place.”They soldiered on alone and, for local flower lovers, it’s a good job they did, because when the Matakana Village Farmers Market opened 11 years ago, they took one of the first stalls.

Since then, their beautiful blooms have been a hugely popular highlight of the weekly market, due not only to the quality of the roses, but to the incredibly reasonable prices – just $6 for a posy of 10 short-stemmed blooms or $12 for a long-stemmed bunch, wrapped simply, but stylishly in paper and tied with flax.“If I can sell a lot because they’re perceived to be cheap, I’d rather do that, otherwise I just have to take them to auction,” Joe says, referring to Auckland’s FloraMax fresh flower

market, where he sells wholesale three times a week.There are up to 16,000 hybrid tea rosebushes thriving in the warm Coxhead Creek shade house these days, growing up to nearly two metres tall and in a wide spectrum of colours, from soft white to hot pink, and yellow and orange through to the Valentine’s classic of deep, dark red. They are picked at dawn and then kept cool in buckets in a cold store for a day or two before the market.Together with Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day is not surprisingly one of the busiest times for the Kurmanns; they’ve been pruning their rows of red roses since Boxing Day in preparation.

A perfect specimen in the Coxhead Creek shade house.

Joe and Barbara Kurmann do everything at Whangateau Roses, from tending the 16,000 bushes to picking, packing and selling the blooms.

Valentine’s Day feature 25MahurangimattersFebruary 3, 2016

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There’s not much you can’t get hold of via your smartphone or computer these days, and that increasingly includes finding a significant other to love (or lust) after.The rise in the number of online dating sites might have been rapid in recent years, but it pales into insignificance compared with the stratospheric growth in popularity of hook-up phone apps such as Tinder.These easy to use systems, where you simply scroll through countless photos of people and swipe right on your screen if you like the look of someone, are changing the way people meet and interact with each other, and apparently reducing detailed personal information to a list of basic must-haves and wants.The trend tends to be polarising – to some, it’s just a more efficient way of meeting a potential partner and looking for a long-term relationship, to others it’s little more than a minefield of chancers with their mind on a relationship more short-term. Sheldon Nesdale is the founder of NZ Dating Websites, an online guide that attempts to list and review all the dating sites and apps in New Zealand on one website.He says Tinder and its ilk definitely have both good and bad elements, but it won’t spell the end of online dating or more traditional ways of meeting.“There is so much innovation now, we haven’t seen the end of it,” he says. “Again and again, people assume

new technology means the end of old methods, but it actually just gives them more options.“That’s why I started the website. People don’t know where to turn. I thought it might be useful to help people avoid waste-of-time sites.”One local woman, who asked not to be named, has dated online periodically and says the new apps might be more efficient in filtering potential suitors, but they can carry risks, too.“Up here, where there are less anonymous opportunities to meet new people, it can be great,” she says. “But it’s all about how you manage it, and being aware of the pitfalls. It’s a safe environment if everyone plays by the rules.”However you find a potential partner online, it’s important to meet them quickly, to ensure any connection is based in reality, she says.“It’s interesting and fun for a while, in fact, it becomes really addictive,” she says. “You have these conversations running over several days, but it’s all very superficial; there’s only so much you can convey in a little blue-framed box. It’s entertainment, like discovering a new TV series … In the end, you just have to nip it in the bud and meet them as soon as possible to see if you click.“Having said that, everyone I know who has been determined to get a relationship has been successful. There are plenty of lovely people out there, but you have to really want that.”

Love is just an app away

The rise of smartphones is creating more options for online dating.