Usually I have heaps and heaps of tulips by now. My daughter got married last April and I was worried they would all be over by 21st. But this year a few are just stumbling towards the starting blocks. Consequently mail order is very different from usual years - hellebores are almost finished, tulips are only just about to get into stride. It does feel odd to be scrimping around for things at this time of year!
Also, I am getting the tulips from my Herefordshire patch, then bringing them back here twice a week, so logistics are a bit nuts.
But here I finally got roses into homes, albeit not the homes I had anticipated.
Most of the perennials that I can get into the ground are in the ground. Though there are still a lot of homeless treasures as I still haven't been able to cultivate the field.
Potato boxes are full of various composts for mini growing areas.
The new parking area is almost done.
The new kitchen is almost done where I'll have space for courses as I'm not building a studio yet.
And the sun is almost breaking through. Hurrah!
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Work / Business / Life
I've been cogitating on business (and busyness) lately. Of course I want my business to work. Passionately. Because I really like what I do - and of course for all the usual reasons that one needs to work. But I am not and never will be a thrusting in-your-face businesswoman with lots of pushy marketing campaigns and networks and goodness knows what because that just isn't my way. Nor will I, I hope, take other people's ideas and pretend they are my own. And I hope I never pretend my business is anything other than it is.
When I started growing flowers to pick and arrange and package and sell I didn't really have much of an idea how it would all work out, but I was positive it would work, even if I didn't know exactly how. I have never been someone who plans with much precision, more a big picture optimist. And because I didn't know how it would all work out I didn't want to start with some great fanfare but wanted to give things some time to develop. In fact it has of course worked out fine, or better than fine, with some interesting diversions along the way and I hope there will always be interesting diversions.
I am notoriously admin-lite because I still (ridiculously) feel that time spent on businessy things in front of the computer is time wasted when I could be doing something outside, and because there are times when I am just so over busy there is no time to spend at the computer apart from dealing with the immediate necessities. So I don't send out efficient mail outs, I don't email all my customers from time to time although I know full well that I probably ought to, I'm hopeless at anything apart from utterly necessary follow up. It's not because I don't care about my customers. I do. I really really do. I want every customer to be a happy customer. And to that end I want to be out there doing or organising things to make sure every customer is a happy customer. And I want to be out and about getting ideas and inspiration rather than sitting in front of an email package or whatever. I think that is how things can stay fresh. I know the business might be a lot more efficient in terms of numbers etc etc if I spent more time at the keyboard, but I am totally sure it would lose out in terms of energy and originality, and care. And I did have someone helping me out with all office stuff last year but I felt guilty she had such a boring job, though I will have someone else here too, but only for a few hours a week if possible. I still won't do efficient email mass mail outs or newsletters and the like.......
Some years ago, when the business was still very young, Jigsaw clothing stores asked me if I would be interested in supplying flowers for all their shops. I thought about it, was pleased to have been asked as it was a new venture for them, but knew it was a bit of a tricky one as I was still finding my feet. However, I had discussions with them and got stuck in. But I didn't have enough of my own flowers to supply everything from my garden and fields all the time, so I bought in part of what I was sending out. I bought in British flowers of course, and made up interesting bunches BUT it didn't feel right, it just felt like business rather than the joy of the flowers. And I was naive and didn't realise that actually I could easily have bought in cheap and sent out expensive and didn't need to put a huge variety of blooms in each arrangement, and didn't need to stress about the look so much, I could just have gone to the professional growers and bought stuff in and kept it simple. But I didn't. And ultimately it didn't work for me because I wanted to give them the true nature of what I was doing, and felt I couldn't because of the volume and because I had to buy some flowers in to go with mine, and because of the hot lights in the shops which meant that certain flowers only were really up to lasting the distance and I'm more a fan of slightly more unusual more delicate things that will last at home for good while but couldn't withstand shop conditions in the same way , and it didn't work because I was a small business and couldn't wait up to 90+ days for payment from them, so I told them it wasn't working for me and we stopped working together. But I then did the weddings for several of the girls who worked in the Head Office or the shops, and supplied the Head Office with flowers for some special occasions, so it wasn't a failure, it just wasn't a way of working I wanted to develop. Though I have to admit it was a nice cheque even the way I did it, when it arrived. And I did love doing their Christmas arrangements. And I was terribly pleased to have had the chance.
Jigsaw didn't have flowers for a while then another company, much larger than me and incredibly business minded, got the contract to supply their flowers and I'm sure it's working very well. That company is very clever and has always traded on the impression that they grow everything themselves etc but they don't, they buy in but they buy in British so it's all good, just a different thing, and their flowers are put together by professional florists with a much better eye for cost than I could ever have! Good luck to them, I would not want to be a company like them though they have mildly irritated me at times as they were always a bigger venture than me but seemed to keep a close eye on what I was doing and go in big on imitation - from packaging style to even selling exactly the same jugs after I had exhibited well at Hampton Court. Perhaps it's just competitive business practice. They are very bright - what a brilliant wheeze to harvest your corn for bird seed and package it and market it well for example, I can't imagine how much a tonne that must work out at compared to normal agricultural practices, very very smart.
There are increasing numbers of people out there doing the sort of thing I do. And that is A GOOD THING. But it's not all good when people just jump on a current bandwagon - there are some brilliant growers and flower providers out there, and some less so - why oh why put pictures on your websites of wilting or dying arrangements? We should all try to give our customers the very best at the very least. Sometimes it goes wrong, inevitably, but at least start from the right point?
I do hope this business doesn't go down the same line that so many others do, where people are all in effect turning out the same thing to a greater or lesser degree. I do hope everyone can keep/inject originality into what they do. It's a little dispiriting to trawl through sites (I finally thought I'd better take off my blinkers and see what else is going on!) and find so many young businesses almost using exactly the same words and descriptions of their flowers. Copying is not actually very flattering. Though I have been quite amused to see edible bouquets appearing now, they always went down best for me at trendy markets and events quite a few years back, a lady who came on one of my courses a few years ago kickstarted her whole flower selling business with edible bouquets and they certainly are good fun. I have one bride this year who is going for the whole edible theme, it should be interesting! And it has been interesting having a quick look at what other folk are doing. What oh what is an artisan florist? Not a term I like, at all, it's just so meaningless and dare I say pretentious. I do understand the difficulty in what to call yourself, I am not a florist because I don't have any florist's training, I don't think like a florist, and rarely have clean hands and finger nails, but I do the same job that some florists do. I am not a grower because I don't grow professionally like those who have been trained to do so, but I do grow flowers. So what do we call ourselves - or do we need to call ourselves anything at all? I think the time to define oneself by a job title is so long gone especially as so many of us chop and change through life. I hope we can all maintain our differences and manage to grow ever better and more interesting ranges and produce ever more inventive produce.
Gosh, I need to get off the page and into the gardens. I feel as though I'm veering towards a rant which was never the intention!
When I started growing flowers to pick and arrange and package and sell I didn't really have much of an idea how it would all work out, but I was positive it would work, even if I didn't know exactly how. I have never been someone who plans with much precision, more a big picture optimist. And because I didn't know how it would all work out I didn't want to start with some great fanfare but wanted to give things some time to develop. In fact it has of course worked out fine, or better than fine, with some interesting diversions along the way and I hope there will always be interesting diversions.
I am notoriously admin-lite because I still (ridiculously) feel that time spent on businessy things in front of the computer is time wasted when I could be doing something outside, and because there are times when I am just so over busy there is no time to spend at the computer apart from dealing with the immediate necessities. So I don't send out efficient mail outs, I don't email all my customers from time to time although I know full well that I probably ought to, I'm hopeless at anything apart from utterly necessary follow up. It's not because I don't care about my customers. I do. I really really do. I want every customer to be a happy customer. And to that end I want to be out there doing or organising things to make sure every customer is a happy customer. And I want to be out and about getting ideas and inspiration rather than sitting in front of an email package or whatever. I think that is how things can stay fresh. I know the business might be a lot more efficient in terms of numbers etc etc if I spent more time at the keyboard, but I am totally sure it would lose out in terms of energy and originality, and care. And I did have someone helping me out with all office stuff last year but I felt guilty she had such a boring job, though I will have someone else here too, but only for a few hours a week if possible. I still won't do efficient email mass mail outs or newsletters and the like.......
Some years ago, when the business was still very young, Jigsaw clothing stores asked me if I would be interested in supplying flowers for all their shops. I thought about it, was pleased to have been asked as it was a new venture for them, but knew it was a bit of a tricky one as I was still finding my feet. However, I had discussions with them and got stuck in. But I didn't have enough of my own flowers to supply everything from my garden and fields all the time, so I bought in part of what I was sending out. I bought in British flowers of course, and made up interesting bunches BUT it didn't feel right, it just felt like business rather than the joy of the flowers. And I was naive and didn't realise that actually I could easily have bought in cheap and sent out expensive and didn't need to put a huge variety of blooms in each arrangement, and didn't need to stress about the look so much, I could just have gone to the professional growers and bought stuff in and kept it simple. But I didn't. And ultimately it didn't work for me because I wanted to give them the true nature of what I was doing, and felt I couldn't because of the volume and because I had to buy some flowers in to go with mine, and because of the hot lights in the shops which meant that certain flowers only were really up to lasting the distance and I'm more a fan of slightly more unusual more delicate things that will last at home for good while but couldn't withstand shop conditions in the same way , and it didn't work because I was a small business and couldn't wait up to 90+ days for payment from them, so I told them it wasn't working for me and we stopped working together. But I then did the weddings for several of the girls who worked in the Head Office or the shops, and supplied the Head Office with flowers for some special occasions, so it wasn't a failure, it just wasn't a way of working I wanted to develop. Though I have to admit it was a nice cheque even the way I did it, when it arrived. And I did love doing their Christmas arrangements. And I was terribly pleased to have had the chance.
Jigsaw didn't have flowers for a while then another company, much larger than me and incredibly business minded, got the contract to supply their flowers and I'm sure it's working very well. That company is very clever and has always traded on the impression that they grow everything themselves etc but they don't, they buy in but they buy in British so it's all good, just a different thing, and their flowers are put together by professional florists with a much better eye for cost than I could ever have! Good luck to them, I would not want to be a company like them though they have mildly irritated me at times as they were always a bigger venture than me but seemed to keep a close eye on what I was doing and go in big on imitation - from packaging style to even selling exactly the same jugs after I had exhibited well at Hampton Court. Perhaps it's just competitive business practice. They are very bright - what a brilliant wheeze to harvest your corn for bird seed and package it and market it well for example, I can't imagine how much a tonne that must work out at compared to normal agricultural practices, very very smart.
There are increasing numbers of people out there doing the sort of thing I do. And that is A GOOD THING. But it's not all good when people just jump on a current bandwagon - there are some brilliant growers and flower providers out there, and some less so - why oh why put pictures on your websites of wilting or dying arrangements? We should all try to give our customers the very best at the very least. Sometimes it goes wrong, inevitably, but at least start from the right point?
I do hope this business doesn't go down the same line that so many others do, where people are all in effect turning out the same thing to a greater or lesser degree. I do hope everyone can keep/inject originality into what they do. It's a little dispiriting to trawl through sites (I finally thought I'd better take off my blinkers and see what else is going on!) and find so many young businesses almost using exactly the same words and descriptions of their flowers. Copying is not actually very flattering. Though I have been quite amused to see edible bouquets appearing now, they always went down best for me at trendy markets and events quite a few years back, a lady who came on one of my courses a few years ago kickstarted her whole flower selling business with edible bouquets and they certainly are good fun. I have one bride this year who is going for the whole edible theme, it should be interesting! And it has been interesting having a quick look at what other folk are doing. What oh what is an artisan florist? Not a term I like, at all, it's just so meaningless and dare I say pretentious. I do understand the difficulty in what to call yourself, I am not a florist because I don't have any florist's training, I don't think like a florist, and rarely have clean hands and finger nails, but I do the same job that some florists do. I am not a grower because I don't grow professionally like those who have been trained to do so, but I do grow flowers. So what do we call ourselves - or do we need to call ourselves anything at all? I think the time to define oneself by a job title is so long gone especially as so many of us chop and change through life. I hope we can all maintain our differences and manage to grow ever better and more interesting ranges and produce ever more inventive produce.
Gosh, I need to get off the page and into the gardens. I feel as though I'm veering towards a rant which was never the intention!
Saturday, 30 March 2013
And your question is?
In answer to many questions. For early production in most parts of the Uk you do need a tunnel.
But apart from that, spot the difference:
The garden on the Welsh borders this week
And the garden in Dorset
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
Kitchen flowers
Not just for orphan lambs (and bountiful baking, I think I shall eventually burst if I keep cooking as much as I have been since coming down here, an Aga is a wonderful thing but also a tyrannical beast, telling me constantly to bake bake bake as it's costing me money not to) today the Aga has also been a useful flower warmer. I have been worrying for months about a wedding going out today as the wedding is on Saturday but there are no couriers to deliver on Friday morning, so flowers have to sit around an extra day.
As it happens, rather than worrying about them going over, my main concern has been trying to get buds popped and started into flowering so they're not all tightly furled, not a good look. So buckets and buckets sat on the table near the Aga all night and looked a bit more hopeful this morning. I know, it's exactly what I would usually advise people not to do.
Building work starts next week, more chaos. The trouble is, now that I've been here a couple of months the need for doing anything seems rather irrelevant even though I know really that things need doing. Certainly it will be a good idea to mend the roof, and stop the electrics being scarily dodgy, and I am looking forward to making a lighter brighter sunnier kitchen. I briefly looked rather quickly at the idea of a new kitchen, feeling rather bamboozled and indecisive one day. And just as swiftly reverted to plan A, new worktops, new cupboard fronts, return of the original sink that has been in the garden now for almost 35 years, and old freestanding cupboards coming back in. ...... Who needs to hide a fridge behind a door when I can just as easily hide it through the wall in another room? Why have so many kitchens become banks of doors?
It's dry. But freezing, literally. The flowers that stayed outside in the store last night had n layer of ice around their stems. Roll on spring.
As it happens, rather than worrying about them going over, my main concern has been trying to get buds popped and started into flowering so they're not all tightly furled, not a good look. So buckets and buckets sat on the table near the Aga all night and looked a bit more hopeful this morning. I know, it's exactly what I would usually advise people not to do.
Building work starts next week, more chaos. The trouble is, now that I've been here a couple of months the need for doing anything seems rather irrelevant even though I know really that things need doing. Certainly it will be a good idea to mend the roof, and stop the electrics being scarily dodgy, and I am looking forward to making a lighter brighter sunnier kitchen. I briefly looked rather quickly at the idea of a new kitchen, feeling rather bamboozled and indecisive one day. And just as swiftly reverted to plan A, new worktops, new cupboard fronts, return of the original sink that has been in the garden now for almost 35 years, and old freestanding cupboards coming back in. ...... Who needs to hide a fridge behind a door when I can just as easily hide it through the wall in another room? Why have so many kitchens become banks of doors?
It's dry. But freezing, literally. The flowers that stayed outside in the store last night had n layer of ice around their stems. Roll on spring.
Monday, 25 March 2013
Box scheme
So first it's to boxes. As I moved so may plants, lots of boxes/crates were involved. And lots are still involved. I found a lot of secondhand plastic plant (or other uses probably) crates and moved loads of plants in them, and now I'm using lots of them for emergency growing. I don't have tulips at the new garden, though still have tens of thousands at the old garden which I hope will be appearing here (sent in more boxes) soon, but I needed to have some of my favourites here so hurled them into the plastic crates. There are a few lines of crates strewn about the gardens so far.....
But most plants were moved in potato boxes, secondhand of course - people who know me know I'm a rather keen recycler. And these are a godsend. It has been so bloody wet and vile that cultivating the field next to the garden has become rather a joke. I sprayed off a bit, finally, in ancitipation of cultivation, but I just don't want to get any machinery on to the patch as it will make a hideous claggy puddled clay mass not far below the surface and I'll just be storing up problems. So it will just have to wait until everything has dried up, maybe it will be in waiting for months. And the main patch will definitely have to wait for many months as I do not want to start off by creating a whole heap of future problems. So the solution to getting some annuals going has to be elsewhere. It's boxes. I've filled some with leaf mould/grass clipping compost which I'm topping off with gold dust compost from the proper domestic compost pile (beautifully rotted now for three years) and sowing little spot crops of annuals while other ground gets happier. I've made plastic covers for warmth and I'll raise them on cloche hoops when they appear. Mini tunnels I reckon.
The peonies which I moved from the other garden are coming up beautifully. Unfortunately there is a secret weapon at loose in the garden. She likes the peony bed more than anywhere else, and new shoots seem a bit of a draw. Oh and that was my favourite sheepskin boot in the picture.....
Friday, 22 March 2013
Spring?
All felt fantastically optimistic at the beginning of the week. I moved potato boxes to make small raised beds in what was the old veg garden - they'll be veg beds next year - and cover ex lawn, dug over another bit of new bed and gave some of my perennials new homes (they breathed out after being held in a straightjacket of clay for several months), moved a heap of perennials from bags and boxes over to the new bed in the old veg garden, put fleece down to warm the ground prior to hurling a few annuals at the soil....... Then I spent the second nice day running around and couldn't get into the garden. Then a morning filling boxes with old leafmould and grass clipping compost (I'm trying to bring nothing in to this garden for as long as possible but making do with everything I can use) prior to making plastic covers and sowing annuals.
Then it rained.
And stormed.
And rained some more.
And at the Herefordshire gardens tulips are once again under snow.
Lawns here are now under water again. Large new perennial bed is like a water bed, if you drop a plant at it (yes I know it's not a good idea but it happens) there's an unhealthy sploshing sound, the earth wallows a bit then settles stickily. The plant all but plants itself, but really not in a good way.
On the bright side, I am so overwhelmed by the number of really rather wonderful people who would have liked to come and help me here, but couldn't choose everyone.... Owing to the weather and prolonged wet I'm changing my ideas about how much I can get on with this year and am going to concentrate entirely on the garden and wait to cultivate strips in the field for annuals until it really has dried up. If I try to get onto that land now, even if it dried out for the next couple of weeks, all I will be doing is creating a horrible puddled layer of claggy clay not far beneath the surface, which will be impenetrable for plant roots and will form a water basin. No point. Patience will have to be a bit more of a virtue than it has historically been for me!
I've been asked to do the flowers for the Gardens Illustrated Chelsea Lecture again which is always fun, and am about to offer a little project with River Cottage doing flowery creations for hen parties, should any hens want same, and probably some other courses. I'm thinking of headdresses for hens, and also flowers to wear, it's particularly fun to wear flowers in your hair and there really aren't many opportunities unless you're a seriously boho type of gal. I think it's definitely time to replace fascinators with floral headpieces. (Though I admit I did go for a feathery rather than flowery option for my son's wedding as I felt I'd done enough flowers and wanted to fade into the background, though that was probably not exactly the impression in heels that made me about 6 ft 3 and a dead bird in my hair).
There are so many amazing projects round here, lots of people growing flowers, so I'm going to ask some of them to supply me with annuals when I need them for large do's early in the year. I'm sure my perennials will catch up after their trip down here so they should be fine. It is all rather exciting, re-starting, though some days a little daunting.
Then it rained.
And stormed.
And rained some more.
And at the Herefordshire gardens tulips are once again under snow.
Lawns here are now under water again. Large new perennial bed is like a water bed, if you drop a plant at it (yes I know it's not a good idea but it happens) there's an unhealthy sploshing sound, the earth wallows a bit then settles stickily. The plant all but plants itself, but really not in a good way.
On the bright side, I am so overwhelmed by the number of really rather wonderful people who would have liked to come and help me here, but couldn't choose everyone.... Owing to the weather and prolonged wet I'm changing my ideas about how much I can get on with this year and am going to concentrate entirely on the garden and wait to cultivate strips in the field for annuals until it really has dried up. If I try to get onto that land now, even if it dried out for the next couple of weeks, all I will be doing is creating a horrible puddled layer of claggy clay not far beneath the surface, which will be impenetrable for plant roots and will form a water basin. No point. Patience will have to be a bit more of a virtue than it has historically been for me!
I've been asked to do the flowers for the Gardens Illustrated Chelsea Lecture again which is always fun, and am about to offer a little project with River Cottage doing flowery creations for hen parties, should any hens want same, and probably some other courses. I'm thinking of headdresses for hens, and also flowers to wear, it's particularly fun to wear flowers in your hair and there really aren't many opportunities unless you're a seriously boho type of gal. I think it's definitely time to replace fascinators with floral headpieces. (Though I admit I did go for a feathery rather than flowery option for my son's wedding as I felt I'd done enough flowers and wanted to fade into the background, though that was probably not exactly the impression in heels that made me about 6 ft 3 and a dead bird in my hair).
There are so many amazing projects round here, lots of people growing flowers, so I'm going to ask some of them to supply me with annuals when I need them for large do's early in the year. I'm sure my perennials will catch up after their trip down here so they should be fine. It is all rather exciting, re-starting, though some days a little daunting.
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Hail Snow Floods - again!
The delightful couple who came from London yesterday to talk about their wedding flowers for River Cottage this summer were almost stranded here as it hailed so hard when we were inside chatting that the gateway was completely flooded. The groom had to brave wet shoes and carry his bride to be across the torrent So it's not the best gardening weather in these parts!
My daughter, mid return journey to Burma, was stuck in a transit lounge in Dubai this morning and mailed a few of their blurry shots from the wedding. Blurry yes but you get the general idea. There will be lots of flowery details etc etc from the official photographer in good time.
Butley Priory is a magical place for a wedding. Daisy wore a dress refashioned from an antique 19th century dress worn by a previous bride in her family, she looked utterly beautiful of course, and I think my son looked pretty good too! (And on a flower note, the fact that the flowers in her hair matched the flowers on Joe's tie was actually accidental, her bouquet was hellebores with a tulip or two and myrtle sprigs from a shrub here that was allegedly grown from a cutting from a sprig of Queen Victoria's bouquet, or so my mother always told me ). Happy days indeed.
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| Making Daisy's hellebore bouquet |
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| Butley Priory |
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