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Tag Archives | British cut flowers

‘All of the Garden’ Bouquet

By on April 20, 2014 in Anemones, Blog, Cut flowers, Narcissi, Tulips

Clare West (photographer and lover of flowers – great combo) was with us again last month, you can see her blog post about what we are up to in the garden here.

I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to record the picking and making of our new ‘All of the Garden‘ bouquets. They are exactly what they describe – everything that is in flower that week gathered into a gorgeous garden bouquet.

We started in the field by picking my favourite Narcissi variety ‘Geranium’ – wonderful scent and a good stem length for hand tied bouquets.

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 Next it was in to the polytunnel to pull a few tulips, this one is a lily-flowered variety called ‘Purple Dream’. People are always alarmed to see me pulling the whole tulip out of the ground and snipping off the bulb. We treat them as annuals so that harvesting and clearing the ground for the next crop is done in one go. The bulbs are composted and I get to choose new varieties for the following year.

 

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Once everything is picked, it is off to the flower studio to assemble my bounty.

 

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All the flowers and foliage are stripped of lower leaves and laid out in piles on the table. The more variety of materials the more textured and natural it will look, ideally I like to use about twelve. Here I am using (from left clockwise) Anthriscus ‘Ravenswing’, Eucalyptus parvifolia, Rosemary, Pussy Willow, Tulips ‘Blue Diamond’ and ‘Apricot Beauty’, Hellebore ‘Harvington Double Yellow’, Pieris, Anemones ‘Galilee Pastel Mix’, Arum italicum and Narcissi ‘Geranium’.

 

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Now I flex my hand muscles and get to work, I will keep going until everything on the table is used.

 

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The bouquet is tied off with raffia and will be aquapacked and placed into one of our specially designed transit boxes. Off for next day delivery to one lucky recipient! You can order one of our mail order bouquets here.

 

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Sweet Pea Grow Along – Part 3

By on February 28, 2014 in Sweet Peas

Your carefully sown seeds should be showing some signs of life by now. Remember to keep them cool and bright as they start to grow.

The next job is preparing the ground outside, probably not terribly appealing right now unless you are outside the UK!  If your ground is too wet to dig, a mulch of compost would be better than nothing at the moment. Sweet peas like a rich, moisture-retentive soil.

They prefer an open, sunny position,  so avoid anywhere that is in shade for more than a couple of hours a day.

I plant in long 25m rows so I can have an overwhelming quantity to harvest. If you are planning on something smaller, a teepee/wigmam is attractive (made from hazel or older bamboo canes). Sweet peas must be picked or dead headed to keep flowering. I find it hard to reach the flowers in the centre of a teepee, which can make this task a bit of a chore.

I also do not enjoy tying in, as it is far too labour intensive. I find bean netting offers enough support for sweet peas to do most of this bit themselves. It is cheap, quick to erect and creates a veritable wall of scent once the netting is clothed with Sweet Peas. Here is a picture of our indoor sweet peas at this time last year. Note the sunshine….

 

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Here’s how we prepare our rows. Ground is dug over (ideally in the autumn) with plenty of well rotted FYM. Stout 2.4m posts are banged in at intervals, approx. 3-4m apart. A hole is drilled through the top of each post, wire (electric fence wire) is threaded through and at the same time woven through the top of the netting and tied as taut as you can . Think of it like hanging a simple curtain,  with the bean netting secured to the post using a staple gun to stop any wafting about. Depending on the length of your rows, your end rows may need bracing with a post section notched in and dug into the ground.

 

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This picture was taken by Shannon Robinson last year, when we let the public pick their own. Our next installment will cover hardening off and planting.

Rachel Siegfried

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Flowers, Love and Money

By on February 16, 2013 in Anemones, Narcissi

Finally, sunshine and two whole days
working in the garden! My body needs to catch up with my enthusiasm;
as I sit here writing this I am certainly feeling all that weeding
and cutting back.

Everyone was out today, including my
whippet Violet enjoying the straw I have been putting down to make
the paths between the perennials.

 

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Also, my chickens, who have been free
ranging on the cutting beds throughout the winter. I think it might
be time to make an enclosure as they spent the afternoon undoing all
the good work I have done, scratching the straw paths all over the
beds.

 

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On Wednesday I met The Duchess of
Cornwall when she came to open the latest exhibition at the Garden Museum: Floriculture: Flowers, Love and Money, which is all about the
cut flower industry (until the 28th April). I was part of the Magazine
Space Exhibition entitled 'Six Growers' by Howard Sooley.

Howard came to photograph me on a very
cold day in January with not a flower in sight. I think I do have a
bit of a cold-faced expression, as I had to remove many of my favourite winter layers….

 

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 He had lots of tips for me on how to
photograph flowers, it is something I do want to improve on this
year. Anyway, he seemed really inspired by Green and Gorgeous, even in
it's winter state of mud and twigs, so hopefully he will be back at the height of summer to take lots of beautiful pictures.

It was a real honour to be included in
the exhibition and encouraging to see British flower growers getting
some recognition. Here are some scented Narcissi from the Isle of
Scilly growers who were one of the six:

 

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If you are in Oxford on Thursday 7th March, Christopher Woodward the museum's director will be giving a lecture at the Said business school on The history of floristry and the cut flower trade. 

 

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We will be introducing our new 'Best of the Bunch' range for mail order next month, which will be kicking off with Anemones. I was able to get hold of a rather special pastel variety this year, here is one just about to open and show it's loveliness.

Rachel Siegfried

 

 

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