Drive south-east from Whanganui on State Highway 3 during the summer months and you'll soon spot hundreds of roses blooming in a paddock along the roadside. A celebration of color and fragrance, this garden is a gift to the community and to passersby - and a showcase for Matthews Roses.
Here, on land farmed by their family for five generations, the Matthews family now combines commercial rose breeding and a growing business with sheep farming, cropping and agricultural contracting.
"I always say I married the rose grower, and he married the farmer," says Cath Matthews, 65, who met her husband, 74-year-old Bob, 46 years ago.
She'd just returned from Te-Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington to the family farm in Whanganui, and Bob was working in his parents' rose nursery on leased land in Pūtiki. "I was absolutely fascinated about the metamorphosis of rose-growing," Cath says. "It's like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly - you start off with this little wee bud, you put in the rose and it grows into a plant and flowers. It's magic!"
Read more at RNZ