Jamie Urquhart can recall his mother, Maryed, arriving home to Hāwea Flat, one day in the early 1980s, with a rare plant – trillium grandiflorum plena. A woodland species, native to New York State.
Urquhart doesn’t know where his mother obtained the trillium, but he became fascinated with the rare and sterile plant, which grows from a rhizome.
In his mid-20s at the time, Urquhart began to carefully divide the rhizome, gradually increasing plant numbers, albeit at a slow pace.
“I knew nothing about trilliums,” Urquhart said. “I managed to get five pieces, then another five pieces. It was a bit like the Shoemaker and the Elves story – the five became 25 after a few years.”
When Seven Sharp visited, reporter Jendy Harper was greeted by around 1000 brilliant, blooming plants, with their distinctive pearly white petals.
Finally, after 45 years of cultivating his collection, the 69-year-old is ready to share his trilliums with other, passionate Kiwi gardeners. Urquhart knows of people who grow trilliums in their gardens but believes he is the only New Zealand grower with a commercial crop.
The rare and tricky-to-cultivate trilliums are highly sought after in North America, fetching up to USD$100 each. Urquhart is selling his plants for a fraction of that and couriers them to customers when the flowers and stems have died away, leaving a dormant rhizome.
Helping him take the trilliums to market is his daughter-in-law, Anna van Riel.
“I came into the family a long time before I even realised he had the trilliums, and then he just blurted it out and I said 'do you mean to tell me you’ve been growing these from the age of 25, with just one plant?'”
Van Riel has helped design a website and marketing collateral to ensure the trilliums find good homes, and to keep the species flourishing.
“I have people calling up in tears – 'do you know how long I've been looking for this plant? I’ve always wanted one' - it’s really cute."
When he’s not tending to his trilliums, Urquhart, a former nurseryman, can be found in the vegetable patch. Three generations live on the property and they are largely self-sufficient.
Urquhart also bottles his own beer and wine and makes sourdough bread.
“Everything doesn't always produce every year, but there's always a good year for something.”
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