Oh Tuckshop Gardener, where have you been? I've been at the NEC to get flowers seen....

A pyjamaish slow start to the morning.  Luxury! And time, at last, to put my fingers to the keyboard.

From this..... to this..... with lots of the co-operation and camaraderie typical of flower growers it seems!

to this.....

It's nearly two weeks since the maelstrom began, setting up our West Midlands Flowers from the Farm stand at the NEC for RHS BBC Gardener's World Live.  Having only attended the show as a visitor before, I had no idea what the exhibitors' experience would be, but having now come out of the other side of it, I feel nothing but positive about it.  It was absolutely fantastic, if exhausting!

Luckily, as we were showcasing British grown cut flowers, we didn't have quite the same stress levels as we would've had designing a show garden - at least with cut flowers, you can harvest only the ones which are looking great and pop them into position - not quite the same tricky business as trying to bring on plants to exactly the right stage of flowering in time for the show.  Just trying to do that for plants to fill our hamper and wheelbarrow displays was difficult enough!  Out of the three foxgloves potted up, only one chose to co-operate and put a flower spike up at the right time. Grrrrr.

Working closely with other local growers from the group was great - it was brilliant to get together with familiar faces again, and to meet new growers who haven't yet managed to make it to any of our West Midlands meetings.  Penny of Wayside Flowers, and Maria of The Flower Patch were invaluable in helping to organise the show and kept me going through thick and thin - I think our blend of skills and personalities made us something of a killer team!  Penny was calm and practical, and brought prior experience of exhibiting at the NEC on a corporate level to the table, Maria (and her family) was a treasure trove of handiness - knocking up blackboards, designing posters and leading the charge (voiceless, as it disappeared during the course of the show) during 'have a go' buttonhole sessions with visitors.  And then there was me - a bit Tiggerish in my over-enthusiasm at times, but dragging all and sundry in my wake.  Thanks to all who allowed themselves to be dragged (Polly, Judith, Kate, Jayne and Heather), to More By Design for the loan of the splendid chairs and to my mum for all her flower-related needlework.  

Visitors were really taken with the stand, and our information postcards about Flowers From the Farm disappeared as quickly as we could replenish supplies, obviously there's a lot of interest in locally grown flowers out there!  Asking visitors if they had heard of the organisation and its work, there was something of a mixed response - some had spotted us in the media previously, but for others we were the first point of contact.  After being bombarded by enthusiastic growers, lots of people left knowing more about British cut flowers than when they arrived!

Our scented displays of relaxed country flowers were also snapped up as fast as we could scribble reservation names on labels on the final day, and several people told us "You're the best stand here". The RHS judges almost agreed, giving us second place in a beauty contest which we newbies didn't even realise we were part of.  I subsequently discovered that meant we'd won a prize of £200 which will be used for expenses for future shows now that we've discovered what we're capable of - a massive increase on our budget of unlimited goodwill which generated the impressive display above.  First prize in our sights next year??!!

Even managed to catch up with old friends, Urban Herbs and to cheer an exhausted looking Kate with a flower crown in the final hours of the final day!

Lena from BBC2 Big Allotment Challenge visits 

Toby Buckland looking a little scary at the Gardeners' World Theatre next door to our stand. Sorry Toby!

Cutbacks in the lavender department

Freshly sharpened secateurs glinting in the sunlight, I approached my overgrown lavender in the front garden.  Loved by bees, but possibly not by mum's pushing pushchairs past its thrusting exuberances….

Today it was tamed back behind the railings with some judicious snippage and is now an even, lower growing hedge.  I never want to get rid of the flower heads, so tend to leave my lavender pruning until growth restarts in spring.  A quick haircut now, and it encourages the plant to grow more bushily and form that nice, dense, perfumed thicket which I love so much.

And what to do with my prunings?  Some are used as cuttings, in readiness for the next generation of hedging.  The current plants all started out the same way 10 years ago, so I don't think they've got too much longer before woodiness takes over completely and straggling sprawl sets in, so I need to get some replacement plants thriving to take their place in the next couple of years. The cuttings I took last spring are all looking happy in their pots and are bushing out nicely.

To take lavender cuttings, cut a 10-15cm length of non-flowering stem just below a leaf node, and strip off the bottom leaves.  Fill a small plant pot with gritty compost and push the bare stem of the cutting in at the edge (helps the cutting form better roots if it's at the edge, rather than in the centre of the compost).  One plant pot should accommodate several cuttings.  Water, cover with a clear plastic bag secured with an elastic band and leave on a windowsill or in a greenhouse.  Cuttings should root within about 6-8 weeks. You can tell when they have taken as new growth will appear at the top.  If you're not sure, you can always tip the pot carefully and slide the compost out to check if roosts are appearing.

As for the rest of my copious quantity of prunings, they've been used as mulch around my working area and the compost bins.  Never has the composting area smelled so fragrant!

You can never have too much lavender.  If you are lucky enough to have a south facing frontage, it is the most community-minded bit of hedging you could wish for.  Not only do the insects love it, the passers by never fail to comment on the menthol tinged fragrance at pruning time.  So generous is it when in flower, that I don't even object to the school children running their hands along it and yanking off the odd head or two to accompany them on their way to and from school.  Lavender smells gorgeous and its glory should be shared!

Happy New Year from a happy flower grower

Another year is here.  What will it bring, I wonder?  Lots of flowers and a new growing space would be top of my wish list (along with a polytunnel and more local business links in 2015).

It's funny how the year passes in a whirl of activity from March til December but as soon as the New Year's Eve celebrations are over and Christmas put away for another 12 months, my fingers and mind itch to get started on the next growing year.  My second seed order was placed last week and my mind is now constantly roaming over what new cutting varieties I'm going to find space for in the coming months.


I am, however, fully intending to remain strong and bolt down my seed packets until March - not a lot of point in making early sowings until the daylight levels are extended with the imminent arrival of spring.  I made an exception for a very late sowing of self-collected sweet pea seeds yesterday, which I've put in my unheated porch as I need red sweet peas for late May wedding flowers in Birmingham.  I will have to murmur words of encouragement to the sproutlings on a regular basis… and hope that a lot of them are indeed red like about 50% of the parent plants.

This will be one of my first bright coloured weddings with hot oranges, yellows and reds.  Nearly all wedding requests to date have been for pastels and blush shades, so it is nice to have something different.  I'm providing the bride with buckets of flowers which friends and family will arrange for the wedding themselves.  A lovely idea to get people involved in the day - and one of the ways I got started on this path myself, so you never know, I might even germinate some more local flower folk!  My first DIY wedding flowers order, so it will be interesting to see how it all works.

Photo courtesy The Great British Florist

It's been lovely to meet so many other local growers in 2014 as part of my role as regional co-ordinator for Flowers from the Farm, a network of British flower growers nationwide.  We had our first West Midlands meeting in January, and have met up every couple of months as a group ever since, but nearby flowery neighbours met via this route are seen regularly.  Being part of something bigger has been good for developing my expertise and my network - I now know who I can call on for more supplies and helping hands, whilst all the time keeping things local!  Judith of Pollen Floral Joy has become a key ally for moral support and is a very handy brain to pick for ideas and collaborative projects like our crowning of Bully, Birmingham's iconic Bullring bull for British Flowers week in June.

Knowing there are other people out there, willing to share growing and business expertise is invaluable and makes single-handed self-employment much less like being a horticultural hermit.  Far from it. Flower growing has thrown me into a generous world full of green-fingered folk and I'm loving every minute of it.

January sees me resolve yet again to get my allotment shipshape - my half plot section is already something like ready, with beds weeded and covered with weed suppressing membrane to hold back the insidious self seeders and their bid for world domination.  The scruffy big plot however, still needs some serious attention and as ever, I vow that this year I will get the path layout right to enable better access across the plot.  I've got a massive heap of woodchippings which I scrounged from tree surgeons working in the neighbourhood, and I plan to press this handy waste product into service, laid down over some cardboard in the alleys which I earmark for paths.  I sense a whole lot of earthmoving coming on.  Let's hope for a drier winter than 2014 if it is all going to get done before planting starts in spring.

What jobs have you prioritised on your plot for this year?

I wish you all a happy, fruitful and floriferous 2015.

Wordless Wednesday - Glorious June