Moa Gardens

Moa Gardens A family-built garden in Oamaru full of butterflies, dahlias, art, & stories, opening this summer We are open! From 10am - 4pm every weekend.

Our flower garden is open for picking from Jan 1st until Easter weekend. Please note, we will be closed Saturday Jan 20th as we will be having a stall at the Kaikohe A&P Show. Green Footed Kiwi is a magical dahlia farm on a rural, bush property ten minutes south of Kaikohe. It is run by a homeschooling family passionate about learning by doing and we are ready to share our dahlia flower farm proje

ct to all! We offer:
Pick your own dahlia weekends
Personalised bouquets
Group Bookings
Very Special High Teas
Dahlia Art
Good whole day out! We would love you to visit and share in our enjoyment for what we do!

I officially HATE Spring 🌱 Does anyone else wake up (in the middle of the night) and decide EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ...
24/08/2026

I officially HATE Spring 🌱

Does anyone else wake up (in the middle of the night) and decide EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DONE RIGHT NOW?! πŸ˜‚

The sun is shining.

It's a beautiful day.

Spring is very definitely springing.

And apparently my brain has taken this as a personal challenge.

Suddenly every single thing we've been happily working towards for months has become URGENT. MUST get done before I eat again type urgent!

The hot tubs need cleaning.
And oiling.
The gardens need weeding.
The hedges need trimming.
The flax needs cutting back.
The lawns need mowing.

Milly's Letters to Grandma Moa need finalising and printing and advertising and hopefully sending out.

The shop needs setting up because people coming to reception when we open the hot tubs and campervans and will walk straight through it.

The website needs finishing.
SEO needs sorting.

Don't even talk to me about Google Business Profiles!

There are doctor's appointments and blood tests.

Bumblebee needs training.

There's homeschooling.

And somewhere amongst all of this is a four-year-old who has absolutely no interest in my to-do list. 🀣

And today I could feel myself getting completely overwhelmed by it.

Not because anything is particularly wrong.

Actually, it's almost the opposite.

Things are happening.

The sun has come out. Spring is arriving. We're getting ready to open things we've spent months talking about. Ideas that have existed on bits of paper and in our heads are suddenly becoming real.

And apparently my response to excitement is to write a list containing 647 things and then panic because I haven't finished it by lunchtime. πŸ˜‚

So today I'm trying to remind myself of something I'm not particularly good at:

Everything doesn't have to happen today.

One hot tub.

One hedge.

One letter.

One load of washing.

One dog-training session.

One small step towards this slightly ridiculous thing we're creating.

And tomorrow we'll do some more.

Just cross something off the list.

I'm not unhappy. I'm not even really complaining.

I'm actually incredibly excited.

It's just possible to be excited, grateful, happy... and completely overwhelmed at exactly the same time.

Please tell me I'm not the only person whose brain sees a beautiful sunny day and immediately thinks:

RIGHT. LET'S SORT OUT OUR ENTIRE LIFE BEFORE DINNER. πŸ€£β˜€οΈπŸŒ±

Jen 🐝

22/08/2026

Something is waking up at Moa Gardens... πŸ‘€β™¨οΈ

The girls have been put to work, the scrubbing brushes are out, and six rather neglected hot tubs are finally getting some attention. πŸ˜‚

They've been sitting quietly since we arrived while we've been busy tackling approximately 9,999 other jobs...

But not for much longer.

We're getting them cleaned, tested, heated and ready because the Moa Gardens hot tubs are coming back.

And we may need a few willing locals to help us test everything out before we officially open... πŸ‘€

More on that very soon. β™¨οΈπŸŒΏ

Jen 🐝

21/08/2026

Hands up who loves a penguin waddle πŸ‘‹

Two weeks ago we were lucky enough to spend the evening at Ōamaru Penguins watching these delightful birds waddle home from a day out fishing.

Well worth a freezing bottom 🀣😬

Have you been there? Ever seen a penguin in the wild? Will you be watching Waddle Wednesdays??

19/08/2026

Sometimes you meet someone who really makes you think. πŸ’›

The other day I met someone completely by chance who really inspired me.

I came away from our conversation thinking about it for ages afterwards, and it made me look at Letters to Grandma Moa a little differently too. I think it reminded me why I want to make this work in the first place. πŸ“¬

I'll tell you what happened in the video.

But I'd really love to hear your stories too...

Have you ever met someone, maybe completely unexpectedly, who inspired you or changed the way you thought about something?

Milly πŸ¦‹

19/08/2026

Gracie & Bumblebee 🐢

Bumblebee wants to show you something!

We have been busy today practicing and reviewIng tricks that he already knows. Here are a few of them!

Which one do you think is the most impressive? ( Or the cutest!).

I think I know what one he is best at!

If you have had a dog before, I'd love to hear stories about things they have done or tricks you have taught them!

Gracie 🌸

18/08/2026

One of the rather lovely things about where we live... 🚲🌊

The beach road closes to traffic just past our driveway, so yesterday we borrowed our little stretch of empty road for a photoshoot.

Bikes, cameras, sunshine and the girls riding backwards and forwards while I tried to get the photos I wanted. πŸ˜‚

We're working on a few new ideas behind the scenes at the moment, and these photos are for something you'll be hearing a lot more about soon. πŸ‘€

For now though, having the road between us and the beach almost entirely to ourselves isn't a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Jen 🐝

17/08/2026

I’ve been drawing Poppy today 🌸🐝

Poppy is one of the four moa siblings in my Letters to Grandma Moa series. And probably the most enthusiastic of the four!

She loves flowers, digging, exploring, finding things she probably shouldn’t find... and getting VERY excited about almost everything. πŸ˜‚

Poppy has been waiting rather impatiently for one of her pink dahlias to open, and when it finally does, she sits beside it all morning admiring it.

Then a bumblebee lands on the end of her beak.

She is under strict instructions from Grandma Moa to sit very still around bees, so she tries desperately not to move...even though it tickles.

The first Letters to Grandma Moa will be heading out from Moa Gardens in September. πŸ’Œ

I’ll introduce you properly to Poppy and the other three little moas soon.

Milly πŸ¦‹

16/08/2026

That rock moved!

I had a bit of a shock this morning!

On the way back from walking Bumblebee this morning along the closed road, I suddenly saw the rock move!

I was NOT expecting a seal in the middle of my path!

He was pretty chill, and happy just scratching his back on the ground though.

A bit excitement for my morning!

Gracie 🌸

I hate dahlias.There. I said it. πŸ˜‚We keep getting asked whether we're going to sell dahlia tubers.And the answer is no.W...
16/08/2026

I hate dahlias.

There. I said it. πŸ˜‚

We keep getting asked whether we're going to sell dahlia tubers.

And the answer is no.

Which, from a business point of view, is probably slightly ridiculous.

We grow all of our dahlias from seed. Over the years we've bred some genuinely beautiful flowers, including top-table exhibition dahlias, and we could quite easily name them, multiply the tubers and start selling them.

In fact, we'd probably make considerably more money selling tubers than we will opening our garden for people to wander around.

And it would be a LOT less work. πŸ˜‚

But we don't want to.

Because every winter, something seems to happen to the dahlia world.

My Facebook feed fills up with arguments.

People fighting over prices.
People getting angry because they missed out.
People criticising how other people sell.
Growers getting attacked.
Customers getting attacked.
People arguing over what a particular tuber is "worth".

Over a flower. A beautiful flower that is supposed to bring joy and happiness.

And somewhere amongst all of that, I start to hate dahlias. I hate what they do to people who love them.

I don't want the girls growing up thinking that's what loving flowers looks like.

So we're choosing something else.

We'll grow thousands of seedlings without having the faintest idea what's going to come out of them.

Some will be spectacular.

Some will be absolutely hideous. πŸ˜‚

Some might be good enough for an exhibition bench.

And some will probably be loved by a bumblebee and nobody else.

We'll plant them anyway.

And then, in a few months, I'll walk outside and the garden will be full of flowers again.

We'll cut armfuls of them.

The girls will photograph them.

Bees will sleep in them.

People will wander amongst them.

Someone will fall completely in love with a flower whose name is probably something terribly glamorous like "Seedling 427". πŸ˜‚

And I'll remember that I don't actually hate dahlias at all.

I love them.

They make me happy. They make other people happy. They make the bees and butterflies happy.

We've just chosen to make less money and keep loving the flowers, rather than join the fight over them.

Maybe that's a terrible business decision.

But I think it's the right decision for us. 🌸

What are your thoughts on dahlias at this time of the year? Are you joining in the arguments? Do you think dahlias make you feel or act differently in summer and winter?

14/08/2026

A little sneak peek... of something beautiful taking shape. 🌸

Gracie-Mae has been quietly working away on a new Gracie-Mae Photography project, and today we finally got to see some of her photographs in print. πŸ₯°

She's not quite ready to show you what she's making yet...

But perhaps you'd like to have a guess? πŸ‘€

What do you think all these photographs are going to become?

Address

468 Beach Road
Oamaru
9495

Opening Hours

Saturday 10am - 4pm
Sunday 10am - 4pm

Telephone

0221026413

Website

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