Room to grow
Our winter cover story features talented floral artist and gardener Suzette Herrick, her dog Mavis and trusty van, Vivian. By Katherine Robinson. Photos by Esther Bunning.
“I drive Vivian to deliver flowers, so people see the van as part of me. I especially love delivering bridal bouquets because every single time, brides are so surprised and happy. I love making people’s visions come to life,” says Suzette.
Her remarkable creations must often exceed those visions. She creates magical bridal bouquets and table flowers – big statement pieces are her passion. Flower walls, flowered arches, cloud-like sculptures of flowers, moss and twigs that seem to float in mid-air, or floral headdresses that look straight out of A Midsummer’s Night Dream are a specialty.
“I have to almost be an engineer to work out how everything is going to work. I have made lots of the frameworks myself. When I am creating I never know exactly what I am going to do until I have everything around me. I work very fast, and never make exactly the same thing twice.
“It’s about working with what you have, and fitting in with the organic form of the flower as well. And I never waste anything. When I do bridal pieces, very often they will dry into their own natural art. It becomes like a memory that you can keep,” she says.
Her individual style has worked well with brides looking for something individual. “Every bride is different so I try to reflect their personal tastes and colour palette. I’ve worked with some amazing brides.”
Her floristry – more like floral sculpture – is all the more remarkable when you consider that she never trained as a florist. Suzette first studied fashion design, then she moved into make-up artistry, including bridal make up. Travel followed and eventually a return home to the Wairarapa.
Once home, she knew that her future lay in flowers. Like her mother, Suzette inherited a green thumb from her gran. “I grew up surrounded by gardens as a child, I was always making flower arrangements, and giving them to my grandparents.”
“I always loved nature in all its forms. I like the imperfections of it and see beauty where others might not.”
The love of nature extends to all living things. Along with Mavis (luckiest dog on earth), other four-legged companions include Foo-chihuahua (Foo), part fox terrier/ part chihuahua, and Brodie the orphan lamb, now a fully grown wether. In his younger days, Brodie would travel with Suzette in her van, now he hangs out with the rest of the flock but still clatters over to see her.
Finding she couldn’t source everything she wanted for floral arrangements in New Zealand led to her setting up her own garden on the outskirts of Martinborough. “Now, I supply other florists as well,” she says.
Soon to be put to bed for winter, her garden’s a riot of autumn colour. Fortunately blessed with a water bore that’s seen it through drought, the garden is totally organic. Many of the annuals growing here were grown from seed harvested from flowers grown the previous year.
Behind those beautiful bouquets are hours of hard graft working to tight deadlines. Delivery of flowers to other florists means being up at 3am, picking blooms by torchlight. Or there might be hours of stripping twigs and leaves off blooms to prepare them for bouquets. “Flowers have such a short shelf life, you can’t prepare for an event like a wedding for weeks on end.”
Suzette has plenty of plans. She would like to make more of the peaceful setting by the pine trees. She can easily imagine wedding ceremonies beside them, under a flowery arch. And once Covid 19 is finally out of the picture, she plans a road trip to pitch her skills to bars and shops. “When you put flowers in a space, it just comes alive.”
