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Filming with Gardeners’ World

By on July 31, 2012 in Cut flowers, Larkspur, Lavender, Scabious, Sweet Peas

I was very honoured to be invited to Vauxhall Barracks to film with Gardeners’ World today. There has been an ongoing project to build a community garden on the base, which has been featured several times on the show.

Today the group were throwing a lunch party to celebrate the garden and show the results of all their efforts. I was asked to come along with Rachel de Thame to help the ladies arrange their garden flowers ready for the event. It was great fun and lovely to see how everyone had pulled together to create a fantastic space for all to enjoy.

The ladies had cut buckets of flowers the previous day. We had sweet peas, ammi, scabious, larkspur and lavender to play with. There was a bright mix of colour and enough to do 10 jugs, several posies and a flower ball, which took pride of place hanging in the centre of the tent. 

I’m told it will be screened in a couple of weeks, so we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime here are a few snapshots.

 

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Rachel De Thame helping create a hanging flower ball

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Inside the army tent with all of our creations.

 

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Me with some of the ladies from Vauxhall Barracks.

 

Jo Wise

 

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Rain Rain Go Away

By on July 9, 2012 in Blog

It’s getting tough out there. This prolonged wet weather has had an effect on the flowers, but it’s more evident to me in the strain on Rachel and Ash. We grow enough flowers here to cover ourselves and can supply everything we’ve committed to, but it’s certainly a lot tougher than it was last year.

Crazy to think how we prayed for rain back in March, ‘be careful what you wish for’ springs to mind. We always knew building a business around the British weather would be a challenge, but this is certainly testing our metal now. My heart really goes out to all the British growers and other small businesses that are finding it hard. I've heard some sad stories from farmers, marquee companies and boat yards alike. Guess umbrella sales are up.

As the florist here, I don’t get too involved in the growing side, but I’ve learnt so much over the last few years I really appreciate what goes into each flower I use. It’s hard to see a lot of Rachel and Ash’s hard work come to nothing because the weather has been so unkind.

Thankfully, there are a lot of flowers in the garden and the ones we can use are looking as radiant as ever. Here are a few colourful shots:

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Flower crown of nigella & sweet william and a bridal bouquet of nigella, sweet william, sweet peas, alchemilla and apple mint.

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Bridal bouquet of roses & knautia and a bridesmaid bouquet of roses, peonies, stocks and alchemilla.

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This beautiful shot was taken by wedding photographer Matt Davis.

If you are planning to come along to our open day on July 15th (1pm to 5pm) maybe you'd like to join me in a sun dance?

p.s whoever said "there is no bad weather, only bad clothes" was lying!

Jo Wise 

 

 

 

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‘Coolbot’ is certainly cool!

By on June 25, 2012 in conditioning, Floristry, Refrigeration

We have finally got our coolroom going just in the nick of time. We have insulated out a storage room, and installed a split unit air conditioner (thanks to Paul 'Woody'). 

 

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We have then rigged up a device from the USA called a 'coolbot' (www.storeitcold.com), which makes the air con unit into a chiller to give you some extra cooling power. It's a very small gadget that only uses a tiny amount of electricity itself. For example we can easily get 4 degrees now (down from 18), although we are currently using it around 9-10 degrees.

Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? All the details are on the coolbot website, with lots of practical advice about insulation which is very important. Maybe it can't work miracles in every environment, but it certainly is for us. Many thanks to Ron Khosla for some timely advice during installation and customer support.

 

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Ashley Pearson

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