Blog
Learning and Growing
Saving seed is one of the easiest and most satisfying jobs to be done in late Spring and Autumn. I like it so much I’ve made a few little videos to show how simple it is. They definitely won’t be Oscar nominated but if you want an idea of where to start, they might help!
Paula, Mill Pond Flower Farm
Back in January, Paula, Carol and I were invited to speak at the Flowers from the Farm conference which was titled - Plot to Profit. We took to the stage and delivered our top tips to ensure your flower business and you are profitable, and in August, we’re going to highlight these tips again in a free zoom call.
EDIT - 14/8/23 - Sorry the spaces are now reserved, please contact us to go on the waitlist. - If you’ve booked a space and now can’t make it, please let us know
Want to join us? - do make sure you’re available, as spaces will be limited
Date - 16th August 2023
Time - 8.00pm (BST)
Location - your computer
One of the motivations of flower farmers for growing and selling in their local area is to supply flowers that have a lower impact on the environment than those available elsewhere. We think long and hard about the detail of what we do and make careful decisions about how we grow, the cultivation practices we use, if and how we deliver, what tools and equipment we use and how we wrap our flowers. But how do we know if any of this makes a difference?
Research into the UK cut flower industry is scant, with the most relevant report an MSC dissertation written by Rebecca Swinn ( a summary by Angela Coulton can be found here ). Rebecca Swinn compared the carbon footprint of a typical bouquet of flowers and a similar quantity of UK grown flowers, which were then revisited with more accurate composition, finding that
5 Kenyan roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 31.132 Kg Co2
5 Dutch roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 32.252 Kg CO2
5 outdoor grown UK snapdragons + 3 UK lily + 3 UK alstromeria – 3.287 Kg CO2
15 stems mixed outdoor UK grown flowers, grown and sold locally (eg to Booths supermarket, Lancashire) – 1.71 Kg CO2
I’ve been growing cut flowers for sale for 11 years in the Scottish borders, delivering locally and have always focused on making as low an impact on our environment as possible. The Scottish Government are currently offering funding for farmers to undertake a Carbon Audit so I thought I’d take advantage of the offer and have one completed on our flower farm, to see how we compared to others and to look for improvements. We were contacted by email and supplied some information ahead of time, then there was a visit from an auditor and finally we provided them with a list of additional data. The auditor’s job was to measure and interpret the data and provide us with some recommendations for action.
To give a bit of background before the big reveal, Mill Pond Flower Farm operates on a 4 acre site comprised of
1 acre under cultivation -
Permanent planting beds 363m2
Rotation crops beds 88m2
Cover crop bed 90 m2
2 x polytunnels 180m2
1 acre under water
2 x acres trees, hedges & grassland
We use green manures, mulches and some horse manure in our cultivation. Our plants are grown with minimal soil inversion, the only digging is to plant bigger items and remove large perennial weeds. Equipment used is mainly hand tools or electric and rechargable. We supply primarily wholesale to florists, with some arranged weddings, delivering using a diesel van. Electricity is purchased from a renewable electricity supplier.
The carbon audit found that our Farm Carbon Footprint is 0.27kgCO2 per 1 KG of farm product.
For every 1 kg of flowers and foliage that we produce and deliver, we create 0.27kgCO2
This figure is created so that it can be compared to other activity across a range of scenarios. Unfortunately there were no other artisan flower farms in the system to compare against. However, a comparison to the figures for flowers already mentioned is enlightening. The figures are of different things, our measurement is in kgCO2 per kilogram of flowers while the ones in Rebecca Swinn’s study were per bouquet. I popped to a supermarket and weighed a few similar sized bouquets to compare and they ranged from 350g to 600g including wrapping ( I really didn’t want to buy them just for this blog).
If we accept that a bouquet as described in the study is approximately 500g, these are the figures to compare:
5 Kenyan roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 31.132 Kg Co2
5 Dutch roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila – 32.252 Kg CO2
5 outdoor grown UK snapdragons + 3 UK lily + 3 UK alstromeria – 3.287 Kg CO2
15 stems mixed outdoor UK grown flowers, grown and sold locally 1.71 Kg CO2 (eg to Booths supermarket, Lancashire)
Mill Pond Flower Farm mixed flowers and foliage 500g 0.13 KG CO2
That’s quite a comparison!
Put another way, a comparative bunch of flowers produced on a windy Scottish hillside produces a carbon footprint that is just
0.41 % of that of 5 Kenyan roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila
0.40% of that of 5 Dutch roses + 3 Dutch lily + 3 Kenyan gypsophila
3.95% of that of 5 outdoor grown UK snapdragons + 3 UK lily + 3 UK alstromeria
7.6% of that of 15 stems mixed outdoor UK grown flowers, grown and sold locally
While that’s quite a startling finding, the whole point of completing a Carbon Audit is to look for ways to reduce our carbon footprint. The recommendations for action were
Reduce purchased compost - we only use seed compost and have some of our own in preparation
Analyse nutrients in the soils
Use no inversion practices whenever possible
Consider renewable energy - we already use a renewable tariff but are planning DIY solar thermal and micro-hydro
Keeping the polytunnels clean allows solar heat to be utilised better
Accurately monitor energy use and identify opportunities to reduce energy use
Identify ways of reducing diesel usage - our van use is the most difficult issue as we’re really rural and electric vehicles aren’t currently viable for our location. We have reduced our delivery area but this does also reduce our customer base significantly.
It’s been a very interesting process and we’ve learned a lot about what data is useful in measuring our impact. The points raised in the recommendations are all ones that we knew might be issues and were looking for workable solutions.
The biggest surprise has been the scale of the difference between the carbon footprint of our flowers and others available in the UK. Our growing practices and the decisions we make on a day to day basis mean that our flowers really produce massively lower emissions, plus they’re beautiful, long lasting, pesticide free and scented. A single banana has a carbon footprint of 0.08kgCO2 and for the same emissions you could have a big bunch of our flowers. I’m going for the flowers every time!
Have you got our latest email?
Well you won’t have done if you haven’t asked to know about our courses, because we only want to be communicating to those who genuinely want to engage with us and know about our information
An email marketing list is a brilliant idea, particularly in these days of instant access to social media.
With an email you’re connecting with those who are interested and who truly want to hear the message you’re giving out.
Instead of blasting out your marketing message to the ether, to a wide audience who may or may not read your message, and hoping it sticks, an email marketing list builds and nurtures relationships with those who’ve actively expressed interest in your floral business, who want to know about how things are growing at the farm and who are going to be receptive to you encouraging them to buy your flowers.
But you need to only send to those who’ve asked for the information, otherwise you’ll annoy, and worse show that you don’t care about the customers, you’re just looking to put your message out to as many as possible.
Quality over quantity is the saying here.
So how do you encourage people to sign up?
Have a signup form on your website. - most email marketing programmes provide easy ways to integrate signup blocks or pop ups that encourage people to put their email address in.
Have an opt-in offer, - will they get a guide if they sign up? or access to an offer?
Share social proof that others have found it useful. Testimonials are really important to highlight how other customers have benefited and enjoyed your flower and using your flower farm.
Send a regular update. Short, and sweet is good. Making a record, with pictures of what you’ve been doing is important to ensure that people know what you could do for them. Show you, and your flowers, in the business.
Here at the Business of Selling flowers we’ve been concentrating on mailing our most loyal and regular customers, but over the last couple of months we’ve had lots of questions from those who’ve signed up to our lists in the past, so we’ll be sending our email out to a wider audience this summer. - If you want to be on our list, please do sign up here (you can unsubscribe at any time )
As small businesses, we have to be looking after ourselves to ensure we can continue working and function for our customers. But as a grower, I talk to so many flower farmers who do everything except prioritise their health and well being, which means their business is unlikely to be sustained in the future.
When we spoke at the Flowers from the Farm conference in January, Paula dressed up in yellow jacket and protective hat to emphasise looking after your safety , and we had a huge amount of feedback to thank us for the reminder, so now i’m hoping to nudge you into action over sleep, so that you can, like me prioritise getting a full night’s shut eye in, because the benefits to both me and my business are immense.
Sleep helps you function and it is crucial for physical recovery. - Working physically can take a toll on your body, and sleep helps to repair muscle fatigue and inflammation. When we’re doing jobs with lots of fine motor control like picking and making bouquets, A lot of the mental acuity needed for that is going to be governed by how time you have been in bed to recover.
Particularly for middle aged women and those of us approaching or at menopause, prioritising sufficient sleep is hugely important, and uninterrupted sleep is the holy grail.
So how can we do it?
Well research says that we need 8 hours sleep, so importantly we need to go to bed 8 hours before we need to get up. (this one sounds obvious, but for years I thought 10.00 was “too early” for bed, but I was on the go by 6am at the latest)
We try and get our children into a routine, but we also need to do that for us as well, do you go to bed at the same time every day?
Don’t take any interruptions to bed, Electronic devices should be charging downstairs.
If you go do bed and worry about what you need to do the next day, make sure you’ve downloaded your worries and ideas to a list that you can get going on straight away in the morning
The most difficult time to get sufficient sleep is when we’ve got very hot or stormy spells of weather, and picking needs to be done early or late in the day. At that point, make sure you go easy on yourself, and recognise that you may not get enough sleep at night. A short nap in the day may help you to recover, and looking after your nutrition and self care in other ways is even more important.
We’ve got a whole section about self care in our Business of Growing Flowers course, and we love that our students recognise that they need to look after themselves to have successful businesses.
By Paula Baxter Mill Pond Flower Farm
Do You need tulips? Hmm, here’s our thoughts on that one…
At Mill Pond Flower Farm our main customers are wedding and event florists. They need particular colours and shapes for specific dates. Tulips are a lovely flower to have, but it’s very hard to predict when they’ll flower so whether they’ll be available for their orders. They’re also very readily available through wholesalers, although they’re not the same as locally grown. We allow the blooms to grow to their full size and they’re fully coloured when delivered. We do sell some local flowers but very limited numbers, although we always have brides ordering buckets of mixed blooms to arrange themselves in the spring.
When it came to bulb ordering time, last year for the first time ever I really hesitated over spending hundreds of pounds on tulips. I consulted the oracle that is the Flowers from the Farm forum and asked what other growers thought about growing tulips. The response was thoughtful but mixed, between growers who don’t grow them (too expensive, not a good return) to those who couldn’t imagine spring without them. I decided not to go for tulips that year and I bought a whole load of hellebores instead.
Fast forward to last week.
We no longer offer retail bouquets and bunches and Mother’s Day is on March 10, so too early for our flowers. Our main markets are now wholesale to florists and our own weddings. How many tulips do I need? Can I get away with not ordering them? Well, there are weddings booked in already, in April and the possibility of one in late March. A decision made to order some, but mainly the more perennial varieties at the lower end of the price spectrum. The tulips are outnumbered by more reliable hyacinth, fritillary and some extra fancy narcissus.
At Plantpassion our customers are far more retail based. We sell lots of flower arrangers buckets, Friday flowers, and also sell to shop florists who sell to the public locally. Our Customers love tulips, in bright colours, and that are different to those available from the supermarkets. So I go for Doubles, Parrot tulips, Viridiflora and really tall cottage types.
Tulips enable us to get the season going with a lot of bright colours and fanfare, but they are a difficult crop as they need harvesting every day, especially if we get unseasonably warm weather when you can get a glut. This year i’ll be aiming for about the same as last year - 6000 tulips, which i’ll plant in the polytunnel, in raised beds and on the field to get as long a period of flowering as possible.
In 2024 we’re likely to miss both Mother’s Day and Easter with our tulips, so choosing a mix of varieties that will take us through April for our Friday flowers is my main focus.
At Carol’s Garden, we mainly sell wholesale flowers and DIY buckets destined for weddings and events. So tulips are an important part of our spring mix, but not as important (or profitable) as anemones and ranunculus. I order under 2000 tulips, 1/3 planted in the tunnel and I choose mainly early doubles, good colours in Darwin hybrids and triumph, and a few fringed for that prime space. In whatever colours I think will be popular for weddings. Then the rest are outdoors, including the later and more weather-resistant varieties. This gives me a long picking season from mid March to End April.
Mother’s Day is also a good market for me and means I can use the smaller quantities of other flowers to mix with a backbone of tulips, anemones and evergreen foliage. If Mother’s Day is before Mid March, I can usually get the early single tulips ready for then. Any earlier, and I won’t bother planting so many of those varieties as they’re not so popular for weddings.
With all these things on our mind, Out come the catalogues and the order are put in, hundreds (or thousands) of bulbs are on their way. We just have to plant them – oh, I may not have mentioned that bulb planting is our least favourite job - roll on the spring and lots and lots of tulips!
Double early Alison Bradley for Flower arrangers buckets
Early May tulips Angelique and Averyron for a bridal bouquet
Have you ever thought any of the following?
I can’t work any more hours
I’ll never get all the jobs done
I'm working all the time but I’m not making much money
I don't seem to have the right flowers for my orders.
I don't have a life beyond flowers!
How can I sell every flower I grow?
I need more plants, how can I get them without major investment?
I’m muddling along but really don’t feel I know what I’m doing
I love what I do but I’m utterly exhausted
I don’t know how to work out how many plants/bulbs/seeds I need
I’ve walked up and down this path 20 times today, is this really necessary?
If you’ve thought any of the above, The Business of Growing Flowers is for you! It will provide you with the tools, techniques and support to go into the 2020 season knowing how to get the most from your farm and yourself without working more hours., to make a profitable business, and also have time to have a life.
So what do we cover?
The course consists of 10 modules, each focusing on a different element of running a flower farm.:
Module 1 is all about Autumn preparation - It will help you think about the work that you can do in the Autumn that will save you time when the season is underway, giving you earlier, stronger and better flowers.
Module 2 is about planning for your market. Who will you be selling to next year? and what does that mean for what you’re going to grow. We’ll get you thinking about what and how many flowers to grow.
Module 3 is growing more flowers for less work. Yes it is the dream scenario, but what work can you put in to make your growing and you more productive and less wasteful in time and inputs.
Module 4 is what to grow? To ensure you get an edge on your competitors and thrill your customers you need to be on the cutting edge of trends, and know the minds of those who haven’t yet come to you. We’ll help you out.
Module 5 is about managing customers and suppliers. How do you make sure that everyone is happy, and stress levels stay low. How do you deal with feedback (both good and bad).
Module 6 is about making yourself more productive, how can you take care of yourself and yet get more out of what you do?
Module 7 is about record keeping. How do you know what you’ve done, and how that will effect what you do in the future. How and where do you keep records.
Module 8 is growing techniques to make you profitable. Even if you grow all the “right” stuff, is it going to make you money.
Module 9 is about planning for the future. What are you aiming for in the next 2/5/10 years. Do you still want to be flower farming? We’ll talk about contingencies, succession planning and work / life balance
Module 10 is a standalone course on cutting, conditioning and presentation. Just ahead of the start of the spring season, we’ll cover this so important topic to ensure you are confident about how you are going to cut and present your flowers at top quality to your customers. .
We are all based in the UK, but grow in very different conditions - Claire is in the South, on chalk soil, Carol is in the West growing on sandy soil, and Paula is in Scotland on the east coast working with heavy clay. We do some things differently and the options we consider, plus the thought processes we use to make decisions are built in to the course. We don’t consider there’s a right or wrong way to grow flowers, but we can explain how we do it and why.
We all spend a lot of time and energy growing our flowers. To be successful, we also need to nurture our businesses and ourselves. If you want flower farming to be more than a hobby, invest some time, effort and a bit of hard earned cash in learning this autumn/winter, and set off into 2024 more confident, focused and organised!
