Our farm
For most of the year, the world's peonies come from somewhere else. Then the northern spring ends and ours begins, and for a few short weeks they come from the South Island. Some of them come from here.
Why Springs Road
Prebbleton Peonies is a family farm at 430 Springs Road, Prebbleton, twenty minutes from central Christchurch. Peonies are fussy about where they live. They need a properly cold winter to flower, and ground that drains freely so the roots never sit wet. The Canterbury Plains give them both.
John and Kerry Coogan bought the farm in 2014 with one idea: grow premium peonies somewhere that genuinely suits them. Tall windbreaks shelter hundreds of rows. Some of the plants are more than twenty years old, and so heavy in flower that they need wires to stay upright.
The family in the rows
In 2022 their daughter Sacha took over the day to day. John and Kerry are still here most days. John still picks. They still have opinions, and they still get asked.
At peak, the crew works head down through the rows while a runner ferries every armful straight to the chiller. From there it's grading, boxing and the airport. Keeping flowers cold is most of the job.
I don't think I'll ever go back to working a nine to five.
Kept for New Zealand
Selling at home came later. The flower was too good not to offer here, and once we started it grew year on year into the farm shop, the delivery service, and the tuber sales that carry the growing tradition through winter.
Stems that meet export grade are boxed, chilled and couriered on our dispatch days. They travel in bud. A peony opens over several days in the vase, so a bud gives you the whole show rather than the last day of it.
Stems that are just as fresh but miss the grade, a shorter stem or a bloom a little further open, are sold by the stem at the farm. Nothing is wasted, and if you're nearby it's often the best-value way to buy from us.
In 2026 Air New Zealand featured the farm in its campaign Of New Zealand, for New Zealand.
Picked to an export standard
Picking for export is a tactile job. Every stem is judged on its size, its shape, its colour and the way the bloom sits, and the exporters check again when it reaches them.
Peonies flower once a year, for a few weeks in late spring. In Japan, Europe and North America that's May and June. Here it's October and November, exactly when the northern hemisphere has none of its own.
The weather sets the date
Peonies don't bloom to a schedule. A warm week brings a variety on early; a cold snap holds it back. The peak usually lands in mid-November, when eight or nine varieties can be flowering at once.
Rather than promise a date months out, we open each variety as it gets close, and every week we update what's actually in the chiller. If you want a particular variety for a particular occasion, pre-ordering reserves it, and we dispatch when it reaches peak quality, not before.
Early October
The first corals and Bright & Beautiful open.
Late October
Bridal Shower, Fairy's Petticoat and the first whites.
Mid November
The peak. Eight or nine varieties at once.
Late November
Pillow Talk and Nick Shaylor close the season.
Typical, not promised
A warm week or a cold snap moves all of it.
Until we meet at the farm shop,
Sacha, John & Kerry
