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!

Onwards and upwards

As you might surmise from the hiatus in blog posts, the world of Tuckshop Flowers is getting busier and busier as I frantically sow both literal and figurative seeds.  Above is a photo of the 100% Brummie event flowers supplied to Birmingham City University earlier this week for their Student Awards Ceremony.

In the literal world, I hope I'm coming to the end of the period where the propagator is a fixture on my kitchen worktop - as the weather gets warmer, the greenhouse should suffice to germinate even the most recalcitrant seed.  But those consistently warm days have not yet quite arrived and I had to have an emergency run down to the allotment with a roll of horticultural fleece to do some cosmos safeguarding on a chilly night earlier in the week.  You'll be pleased to hear there were no casualties due to frost.  Slugs have, however,  chomped all my dark 'Dazzler' seedlings in the Tuckshop garden, while leaving the white 'Psyche' variety untouched.  Haven't tried a taste test myself, so have no idea why it should be so.

In the figurative world, I'm preparing to exhibit at BBC Gardeners' World Live at the NEC, heading up the the Flowers from the Farm team.  Daunting, but exciting and a brilliant opportunity to reach a wider public with the British flowers message.  Hopefully the stand will also encourage a few people  to find the flowery path in future years too!  (And here's a discount code for tickets.)

British FlowersWeek, organised by New Covent Garden flower market  is also peeking just over the horizon from 15th-19th June, hot on the heels of Gardeners' World Live. For this celebration of British grown blooms,  I'm teaming up with the very funky More By Design, an interiors shop in my new favourite haunt, Birmingham's iconic Custard Factory.  More By Design are hosting my pop-up of locally grown arrangements, and I'm also going to do a few larger designs for their window display.

The shop team, Abbie and Heather have got equally over-excited about British Flowers Week and have just commissioned their designers to produce a range of greetings cards to accompany the event.  Wow - how things snowball!!  Will post a link when one becomes available.

And now I must go to sort out my plans for DIY wedding flowers next week, and for my 'Dying Matters' display for next Friday's event with A Natural Undertaking.  All systems go!

Hydrangeas: NOT just for grannies!

Say hydrangea and most people envisage scraggy bushes in unloved suburban front gardens.  There are plenty of them around and I always used to dismiss them as granniated flowers.  But that was before I discovered them as cut flowers.  Fantastic from summer to winter, they keep on producing dense heads which change colour throughout the season.  Just look at the ones below - from the same bush, but the paler one, growing in the shady centre and the pinker one growing in a more exposed part.

 They also make an excellent structural framework for short arrangements like this one (in a jam jar) and hold other, less sturdy flowers in position.  I'm converted.

When the weather gets colder, the flowers will darken to a deep red outer ring, with a greenish centre and look stunning in autumn arrangements.


Even the crispy heads look good in their own right when they give up the ghost after the frosts arrive.  These beauties will hold (but eventually lose their pinkish colour) all through the winter 'til you chop them off to welcome the new buds in the following spring.

Have I managed to convince you yet????

Picture perfect roses

Rosa 'New Dawn' - soft shell pink, blowsy and so.. well.. rosy...

Mixed bunches - includes Rose de Rescht (dark pink, front small bunch), Ferdinand Pichard (stripy), Zepherine Drouhin (dark pink in taller bunch).  The perfect tiny shell pink one in the small bunches is Felicite Parmentier - has loads and loads of flowers on it at the moment.  They all smell gorgeous too.  How can anyone resist?