N - Nurseryman

I've written about a couple of these people before. For as long as I can remember I knew that Frederick Cooper and Cooper's Seeds were "ours". Frederick was a younger brother of my 2 x great grandfather and was a baby when the family emigrated to New Zealand in 1841.

Frederick began his seed and nursery business with a nursery in Taranaki Street in 1860. After he married, he had business premises in Manners Street and later established Bijoux Nurseries in Lower Hutt. In the end, seeds and seed production became what they were known for into the 20th century.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 9 August 1881, page 1

Dominion 13 May 1916 page 13

DNA matches led me to discover that James, one of Frederick's elder brothers was in the same line of work. He established a nursery business in Invercargill about the same time as Frederick had done so in Wellington. James advertised trees and shrubs imported from Tasmania, where his wife was from, as well as a wide range of fruit trees and berries. James had a large nursery outside of Invercargill at Waikiwi which was later sold to James Lennie who continued the business into the 20th century.

Southern Cross 3 September 1898 page 8

Southern Cross 21 October 1899 page 15

Southern Cross 22 September 1900 page 6

John Cooper, my 2 x great grandfather had started his working life as a Tailor following the path of his own father, but in later life was listed as a green grocer and photographed outside his store in Kaikoura with Fruiterer painted on the exterior. While researching James, I came across somebody else with a nursery advertising in newspapers.

John's eldest son James appeared in street directories and on electoral rolls as a Market Gardener in Kaikoura. At some point after his father's death in 1895, James left Kaikoura and from as early as 1900 can be found living in Cheviot and begins advertising a nursery in newspapers throughout the South Island.  

My father has mentioned several times that some family are buried at the Homeview cemetery just north of Cheviot on State Highway 1 and having seen James and his some of his adult children on electoral rolls I had surmised it was his family which Dad was referring to. I didn't know though, that he also was in the nursery business.

Press 27 June 1916 page 1

Otago Daily Times 15 July 1922 page 3

So, where did these green fingers come from ? Is there a gardener hiding in their past who I have yet to discover or was it just chance ?

I am sorry to say, after reading lots of their advertisements they may have contributed to the suffering many of us hayfever prone endure by selling privet, escallonia and pine. But I am impressed on the other hand with the variety of fruit trees and berries they also sold. I wonder how many of the fruit trees found in the fruit basin of Cromwell and Central Otago today have come from rootstock sold by the Coopers.

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