Tales From A Farmer Florist Part 2
Floristry and making space.
Walking in the country I’d gather hedgerow finds, cow parsley, interesting grasses and twigs covered in lichens, my daughters called me mother bird because of all the twigs I would bring home, “yes but look at how beautiful this one looks” I would say.
Hello my flower loving friends and welcome to part 2 of Tales From A Farmer Florist. Last week I spoke briefly of how I came to be working with flowers. So where was I, oh yes- The trouble was…
So before I’d even started the business and only weeks after I’d taken my floristry course I knew that something wasn’t quite right. First off- I had no idea how I wanted my business to look, I had no idea what I actually wanted to do, I just knew I wanted to do something with flowers. I had a vague thought that I would carry on event styling but deep down I knew there was something different calling, something just kept niggling at me. By this point it was late spring and my garden was bursting into life. Back then I had a small Victorian garden which was so very beautiful. The garden wrapped around the house and was my greatest passion. Wisteria was popping over my head, roses were full of buds and dainty aquilegia flowers danced on the breeze, it was idyllic. The way the flowers moved, smelt and the textures. The perfect imperfections of flowers grown in a garden were a million miles away from the clinical imported blooms from my floristry classes. Poker straight stems, all perfect, no scent- ok they may have lasted ages in a vase (because they had been treated with chemicals) but they left me cold. We had got so used to flowers mass produced and wanting vase life that we’d forgotten to slow down and appreciate the fleeting beauty of a garden gathered bouquet. So what if it doesn’t last, doesn’t stay what is perceived to be perfect. When did we lose the simple pleasures of admiring flowers for their beauty in the wonky stem, the delicious scent, the faded petals as they begin to crisp and take on a translucency till they dry in the vase. Flowers remind me of lovely humans, aging is a natural progression and is beautiful. A face that has lived is so much more interesting than a face full of plastic (that might not make me popular, oh well). My mission was suddenly crystal clear, to grow my own flowers and get the garden gathered bouquet respected, admired and change the way people think about flowers. I wanted to grow flowers and educate anyone who would listen as to why they were better than supermarket blooms or imported floristry flowers.
Walking in the country I’d gather hedgerow finds, cow parsley, interesting grasses and twigs covered in lichens, my daughters called me mother bird because of all the twigs I would bring home, “yes but look at how beautiful this one looks” I would say. I started gathering as much natural gathered and grown foliage and flowers and creating arrangements and posting them to instagram. This was the point I put my name A Bunch Of Wild to my account and started blogging. I’d already been using Instagram privately and growing an account full of lovely people that loved antiques, old houses, interiors and flowers so it didn’t take much to switch this over and no one seemed to mind. I bought all the domains, started a Wordpress website (that was a challenge but I got there in the end). I still had no idea what my business model was, I just knew I wanted to make a living from this because I didn’t want to do anything else. So how exactly was I going to do that…
Shortly after I’d started the blog I stumbled upon an article by Green & Gorgeous, the flower farm that actually started it all! They were growing fields of flowers, sold flowers to florists, did weddings and had a flower shop open from the field every Saturday in growing season and better still- they were offering workshops in flower farming. I booked two places for Mr C and I and can honestly say it’s been the best workshop I’ve ever been on. We spent a day learning all about the flower farm, we also got to sow seeds and make a bouquet of dahlias, plus we ate an excellent lunch! We came away from that day so full of energy and anticipation. We wanted to start our own flower farm!
I should point out that at this point I had no land other than my garden and I didn’t know who I was going to sell these flowers too, I didn’t have much of a plan beyond growing as many flowers as I could in what space I had. I managed to bag myself a free greenhouse from the next village that we crammed into a corner of the garden and I started selecting seeds from catalogues, choosing only things I loved in a palette I loved. I never set out to please everyone, that was so important to me, by growing what I loved I knew I would attract the right people to support my business even though I still had no idea who they were yet.
Come spring of 2017 I had a full greenhouse and a garden where I’d run out of space and it was becoming apparent that in order for this to take off- I would need land…
Part 3 continues next Sunday. Sign up for free so you never miss a post and if you are enjoying my newsletter please share it with anyone you know who would appreciate it, thank you.
Emma