West Midlands Meet Up - Flowers from the Farm

We came, we saw, we ate lots of cake. And along the way we discovered that most of us were career changers with a major crush on flowers.  Some had started from the flowery end and got into growing, others from the growing end and had got into arranging but we all ended up here in the Tuckshop today, swapping tips under broad golfing brolly otherwise known as the network of British flower growers, Flowers from the Farm.

I'll try to sum up the wide ranging discussions under a few broad headings, or this post could stretch on into late summer….

Social Media

The topic that seems to preoccupy every business these days.

Google+

One key discovery:   before you do anything else, make sure you set up Google+ page as this is the first step to getting ranked by search engines. No Google+ page = invisibility for you and your website (otherwise known as appearing on page 27 of search results).  Even without a website or any other online platforms, you can set up a Google+ page and personalise it with photos of your flowers and a profile of yourself and what you do. Lots of people leave theirs as the generic map  and headings only, so make yourself stand out by making the effort to make it look great. It's no harder than putting pictures into a Word document and makes a much better first impression.

Joining Google+ will also give you access to the Britishflowers Google group.

SEOs and Keywords

When choosing keywords for your website for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), check Google Keywords to inform yourself about what search terms are the most commonly used by potential customers.

Website packages

You can build a reasonable website using one of the many readily available templates available out there. Webs, a sideshoot of Vistaprint, have a reasonable selection and offer regular cheap deals for their premium packages which also get you a domain name.  Other suppliers are, of course, available and a quick online search will probably give you plenty of options.  But they do take time to build, and you do need to be comfortable with writing copy and to have an eye for what is a good quality image to use.

Image Tools

I shared my recent discovery of an cheap app called 'Rookie' which is great for adding text, frames or various sticker details to photos - great for sharing or for quickly creating promotional materials.

Consistency

Another issue which came up in various forms was the need to develop a consistent online presence.  This means using the same name, logo etc across the whole range of social media platforms.  Choose which furrow you're going to plough and stick to it - make sure potential customers know who your are and can find you on twitter, Facebook, on your website etc.  Don't appear as different things in different places (says she, Tuckshop Gardener and Tuckshop Flowers!!!! - think this may be a bit of a giveaway as to which path I followed to arrive at my current position)   

Twitter 

Following other people is one possible way to find new leads. Follow local organisations and businesses and if their ethos is similar to yours, think about following some of their followers too. Think of it as marketing, rather than...well...stalking...They may look you up to see if they want to follow you back, and you're waiting there with lovely photos etc to just drag them into your network. And of course, you can follow other flower growers -  a welcoming bunch of other flower powerers in the form of #Britishflowers hour on Mondays 8-9pm.  

Marketing

There is a big buzz around British flowers in the media at present, and people get very excited when they discover they have a local person involved in this broad movement.  If you are a member of Flowers from the Farm, make sure you display the logo prominently on your market stall, website or wherever else you are selling from - it generates lots of positive feedback and interest.  Also don't forget you can also download the Great British flowers logo from the FTTF website.

We also discussed the role of packaging in positioning ourselves in our markets - do we want to be Skoda, VW or Audi?   We can't compete with supermarkets so we have to be careful about defining who we are and what we do if we are to gain a return on our work. 

For classy packaging, consider getting boxes printed - Atlas Packaging design bespoke boxes and offer alternative artworks based on your designs for you to choose from.  The Carrier Bag Shop offer a range of strong twist handled paper carrier bags in a range of colours which can be used to gift package jam jar posies with a little ingenuity - they may need a snip  down the sides for more floriferous things, but come in a great range of colours.

Farmers markets and fairs

These were discussed as a way of getting out and making a name for yourself in your local area, but it was generally agreed markets alone will not generate enough income to be the sole source of business success. However, always presenting a lovely stall can be a great way to pick up wedding and other work and will make local people aware of you as 'that one who does the nice flowers'.  Add a website so that people can find you outside market times and they could be a good place to start. But... and there is a but... make sure your pricing is right from the start and factor in your packaging, overheads, time and all the other sundries.  You don't want to price so highly that you won't sell, but you do want to be generate some income and can't expect to sell every item on your stall.  Don't sell off cheaply at the end, or everyone will soon start coming to you five minutes before you pack up every month! Better to do a 'lonely bouquet' with leftovers and leave them around locally with all your details attached!

Weddings

Pricing in general, and for wedding work in particular, was a topic we discussed at some length and it was very useful to have a florist to hand to gain her input into this.  A useful link on this topic was also highlighted as it discusses the benefits of being transparent with clients about how costs are calculated - not only have you got to cover the flower costs, but you have also got to charge for the time spent consulting, cutting, conditioning, arranging and for being available to see to the details and clear down on the day of the wedding itself. 

Participating in wedding fairs may be a cost effective way to market as you don't have to make a tableful of flowers - just a few stunning arrangements to display your wares.

Funerals

This is a tricky area for flower suppliers to get into as most funeral directors seem to work closely with a specified florist and often there may be percentages to be paid for referrals.   We thought that for what we do, green funerals and natural burials might be the best market to target and that this could be one thing to promote on our websites and to try to create links with via social media.

Suppliers

As small growers, we all need to embrace the fact that at some points in the year, or for very large events, we will need to buy in British flowers.  Now we have each other to turn to for local flowers and discussed the issues of how to price - most of us plumping for a 'by the bucket' appproach.  Other suppliers we'd had positive experiences of were of the Cornwall based Clowance (who have the benefit of allowing small, mixed orders rather than having to go for boxes of one variety) and Tregothan who are said to be particularly good for foliages. Locally, Birmingham Horticultural Market is home to Vitacress who seem to carry a larger range of British flowers than most other wholesalers.

Flowers

We also talked flowers (of course) and it's that time of year when dahlias are very much on our mind.  Judith, the florist amongst us, uttered an "ooooh" at the thought of Cafe au Lait, and we looked at pics of other varieties we'd enjoyed last season - amongst them Witteman’s Best, Peaches, Rip City and the Karma series.

Sweet peas are also pre-occupying our cold frames etc and Owls Acres was recommended (via a Green and Gorgeous flower growing course) as a supplier of tried and tested cutting varieties.

How to keep our flowers looking lovely, once cut, came up - all of us agreed that whenever we sell them, we condition them properly for 12 hours before selling or arranging and had a bit of a debate over whether to use chemicals or not. Some people opt for a sterilising tablet or a spot of bleach, others for fresh, clean water and a care recommendation to customers that they change the vase water daily to keep the flowers looking their best.

We also discussed results of our accumulated September sowings, and the consensus was that in recent winters, only seeds sown under cover have been successful. Amongst these were ammi, cerinthe, cornflowers.  The unpredictable nature of spring has made these early sowings invaluable though, so busy greenhouses will abound later in the year.

The ranunculus debate rumbled on from last week's #britishflowers hour about whether they grow better under cover or outdoors. We thought we'd just monitor them and report back on our findings later in the season then compare notes again.

Learning

The majority of this West Midlands meeting had done floristry and cut flower growing courses – arranging largely at local colleges, and further workshops at Green and Gorgeous in Oxfordshire, which were highly recommended.

And this was just some of what we discussed.....

Taking a deep breath and clutching our notebooks to our chest, we decided to aim for quarterly meet ups, with the next one taking place in May. We decided to take turns in hosting meetings so that we get to see the scale of different operations and hope to visit experienced growers as part of this.

We did a broad brush plan for future meetings and decided that vase life trials, 'making' workshops as well as visits are on the hit list.  But most of all, by the end of the meeting, we'd made new contacts who we can call on for extra help, support and spare hands and flowers for big jobs. Invaluable for us one-woman bands.

Eclecticism in action

A rare blue sky moment last Friday saw me grabbing my fleece, donning my wellies and venturing out to clear, weed and sow sweet peas in the greenhouse.  It was also one of those rare occasions when a morning outside coincided with a fully charged iPod and newly uploaded tunes on a playlist.  (The words 'playlist' and 'newly uploaded' whilst tripping so lightly off the fingers into that sentence are still recent immigrants into my mental world - and the achievement of either of them is still a rare and biennial event… mind you, I could say the same of 'fully charged iPod').

When I think of the soundtrack to my own childhood,  the lung-busting projections of Dave Betton, a local club singer leap to mind, as does the tuneful parping of the local colliery brass band.  Mixed into this aural landscape is a large helping of trad jazz and Ella Fitzgerald, intermingled with fairground organs and the insistently chirruping bird from the Cornwall Museum of Mechanical Music.  (I can still whistle that tune 40 years on.)  I feel I can safely challenge all comers to form the most bizarre top 40 of tunes from one's formative years.

But back in the garden, with earphones in place, I found that to music, even digging out ground elder could be fun.  Rythmic attacks to the beat of Abba's 'Mamma Mia' were followed by aggressive uprooting accompanied by Motorhead's Lemmy repeatedly rasping "No Class", loudly in my ear.  Methinks I even sang along in parts, much to the alarm of the neighbour who had, I spotted rather too late, ventured outdoors on an ill-timed errand.

Ah well.  Better to just let the muse take you on such occasions.  And so she did, with the Stranglers, Frank Sinatra, the Skids and Sister Sledge, all tumbling after each other (and out of my mouth) in best iPod shuffle fashion. I'm sure, on reflection, that my own children must find my playlists totally weird, yet find myself equally delighted with eclecticism as a thing to be cherished.

It's true also in gardening. Why limit yourself to a restricted palette? You can, after all, get away with virtually any colour combination if you do it with enough panache - ask the late great Christopher Lloyd.  While you may not choose to mix a pink skirt with a yellow jumper, that doesn't mean you can't do it in the garden - there's enough green about to form a backdrop which somehow makes it work.

And it can be done in a bunch of flowers.  Reading my birthday book 'Vintage Flowers' by Vic Brotherson, I came across a page of cheery art deco jugs filled with pink and orange ranunculus, knobbly blue muscari and egg-yolk yellow narcissus.  And why not?  There's a time to cheer, as well as a time to tone. Long may it reign!  There are plenty of occasions when we have to be sensible after all.

So here's to eclecticism and that Cornish bird.  And to pink and yellow as a new combination….

Release your inner narcissus and let that orange trumpet blow!

Wordless Wednesday. A cup of cheer for a rainy day.

Clearing out the dead things whilst sticking to the paths

Wet.  That's the only word which describes the squelchy state underfoot in my garden.

But yesterday the sun shone and although fearing I might be sucked into the bog that passes for a lawn, I nonetheless ventured out to remove all the brown floppy things that are slowly sliming into nothingness in the borders. Secateurs in hand I snipped.  Out went the black mouldering leaves on the lungworts, off came the rotten necks of gladioli and into the compost they went, along with the strawlike wisps clinging to the newly reshooting clumps of aquilegias. Luckily I have some solid paths to work from, so my compressing feet didn't have too spend long in contact with sodden soil or lawn and hopefully I've managed to do more good than harm in the garden by giving in to the urge to clear and prepare for spring's arrival.

All in all, things are looking tidier and closer to being ready for action come March, but I still have stretches of self-sown forget-me-nots to tame and small battle groups of creeping buttercup to repel from their new footholds in the borders.

Every time I look out of the window at my raised bed, my tulips seemed to have poked their noses a little higher through their covering mulch of compost and the snowdrops under the apple tree are readying their pearly globules, without daring yet to open.

Today heralded a trip to the garden centre (imagine my delight at getting two replacement springs for my secateurs for a quid!) and a couple of nets of seed potatoes for the allotment.  I hardly dare think how wet it will be in my plot at the bottom of the hill and just how rampant the buttercups will be after all this rain and my prolonged absence.  At the allotment however, I can't garden from solid paths and slithering around in the mud on towering platforms of clayey clods will benefit neither me nor the plot, so it will have to wait for drier times. Whenever they may be…..

Wordless Wednesday - Beautifully beetrooty

Wordless Wednesday: Muscari in waiting…

Season stretchers

When the garden is a fairly blank muddy canvas from December to February, it is easy for the spirits to sink.  Borders brimming with flowers seem a million miles away at this time of year and it's hard to believe that they genuinely will return - even when I look in the greenhouse and see pots of sturdy ammi and ever-larger cerinthes, just waiting to leap out of their pots at the first sign of a lengthening day.

So it was with a quickening pulse that I seized upon some Christmas roses (Helleborus Niger) when I spotted them on my way back from a family park trip.  A bit of a bargain at just over two pounds a pot.

Tucked into a shady bed under the apple tree, they add a glimmer of brightness which will keep me going until all the cowslips and primroses in that patch get a shift on, later in the season.  These Nigers are a welcome addition to my hellebore family - I have Corsican hellebores from my own parents' garden - my dad gets fed up of them as they love his garden not wisely, but too well. There is much muttering about 'them green things' as he digs their straying seedlings out of his well tended vegetable patch.

The strangely named green hellebore 'foetidus' is already putting on a show of its first flowers, but no fetid smell is apparent. This one came from my sister, so adds more family connections to the hellebore gang.  I also have several 'Orientalis', which I have nurtured from babies after scooping them from their casually scattered birthplace at the feet of my mother-in-law's plant, and these now yield a sturdy and regular crop of flowers throughout spring. Cutting back their leaves (which get a bit grotty at times) to reveal the nascent flowers helps to display them at their best and stops them getting leaf blight in abundance.  Another job to add to my current tidying list.

I will just have to wait for my new plants to start breeding and then I'll be able to pay all my relatives back with hellebores in kind!

Signs of life

It may be soggy, but the first signs that things are still living in the cold, damp world outdoors are now visible in the garden.  A relief to the prowling gardener, desperate for seasons to turn and for the next year of plants to begin.

I suppose an enforced hiatus in the gardening calendar affords opportunities to do other things.

Lots of cake stands have been made, and teacups drilled in readiness for spring bulbs and violas.  Also lots of fellow flower folk were met in Devon, and tips and experiences exchanged.  It also gave me the perfect excuse to visit a friend whose path, it transpires, I haven't crossed for 5 years.  Indeed, her once-child has now morphed into a very large adult since he was last sighted as a 12 year old….  Which just goes to show how quickly time flies. And soon it will be spring again, so I shouldn't wish time away.

But perhaps the most important outcome of the British Flowers meet was that I was bossed into writing a letter enquiring about the abandoned walled garden which still dominates my gardening imagination.
Those who told me that if I didn't follow up on it, I'd regret it or always wonder "what if…" were right, I think.  So on my return, google was searched and a letter was sent.  What next? Hmmm.

However, without taking on any further land, I've still managed to increase my growing space, having spent the last few dry days digging over the viburnum-vacated patch and grubbing out the ground elder.  I was moaning in a previous post that the black plastic had failed to make an impact on this pernicious weed, but now have to revise my opinion.  Once a fork is jabbed into the snaky rooted mass to dislodge it,  the ground elder can be teased out of the beautifully friable compost layer that has accumulated on top of the plastic. And when the elder is removed, the plastic can be dragged back to reveal dry, diggable soil (a contrast to the adjoining soggy mass) and this can then be stripped of the somewhat desiccated roots which snake across its surface in their quest for light and moisture. Sadly, I've learned through bitter experience, that without a chemical blitz, ground elder is for life, not just for Christmas, but at least this way I get to remove a lot of it in one big purge.  Enough to have a new 10 foot square growing space at any rate.

Newly vacated

Death to the dominators...

I can tell, just by my quest for a photo of this spot in its previous state, that it was a fairly nondescript, unproductive area, as there is barely any record of it for the last couple of years.  Look forward to planting it up in a few months time and letting my seedlings get their roots into this fantastically compost enriched soil.

Joining flowery forces and growing a business

New Year, new resolutions.

Yes I'm trying to do a bit more exercise, yes I'm trying to eat virtuously and all the other stuff we all vow every time January 1st rolls around.  But perhaps more importantly on the flowery front, I've finally taken the plunge and joined Flowers From the Farm (FFTF), a network of British growers which has been at the heart of the upsurge of interest in locally grown flowers.



I always thought that self employment might be a lonely path and that I would miss the sociability of working with a bunch of other folk, but either I've become more self-contained in my old age, or my love of what I'm doing more than compensates for a lack of collegiate chat around the (often malfunctioning) photocopier.  But in this internet age, I feel very much connected to a whole new lot of like-minded people who pop up on twitter every Monday evening, and who share questions, bulk buying opportunities and nuggets of advice via Google groups daily.  I don't feel out on a limb, and I don't feel unsupported - it's all rather marvellous really!  I feel happy in my work, fulfilled and in control of my own work life, even if I still need to sort out the financial aspects of it all a bit more systematically.

This time last year, I was nervously applying for farmer's market stalls for my flowers and looking in from the outside, feeling very much like a kid who'd just arrived at a new, and slightly scary, school. But now various markets and events are taken in my stride (most of the time!), I am on tweeting terms with lots of well-established growers and can even go "OOOOOH, it's Gill!" when she (Gill Hodgson, one of the founders of FTTF) appeared on Rachel de Thame's BBC feature on British cut flowers in last week's 'Great British Garden Revival' programme along with fellow flower tweeter, Rachael Petherham.  Looking at Rachael's wedding jam jars, I felt a surge of pride that we grow such lovely things and make such lovely natural bunches!

Even better, next week is the great #britishflowers twitter meet up in Cullompton, Devon and I'm very much looking forward to meeting the actual people behind the tweets for the first time and having more than 140 characters to share ideas in!  I'm also pleased to be hosting a flower tweeter from Glasgow later this year when she comes to do a wedding in Birmingham.

All of these lovely flowery networks help to nurture small enterprises and provide a very welcoming environment and an internet presence to promote the flowers we are all growing, on various scales.  They have helped me grow (both flowers and confidence) over the last year and made such a difference in every way. The past year has seen me go from looking at  Flowers from the Farm and thinking, "but I don't really qualify to join that group" to being a fully paid up member.  And that, in a nutshell, sums up the experience of 2013.  Looking forward to this one with my first wedding bookings in. May the sun shine on us all in the next twelve months!!

Revolution in the seed box and space on the bookshelves.

Happy New Year and a floriferous 2014 to you all.

The lashing rains and winds have kept me indoors, going slightly stir-crazy, with only the odd nip into the greenhouse to pluck out mouldy seedlings or a quick snip around the flower borders to clear the brown limp leafy matter providing hidy holes for slugs.

But my indoor time has not been without its harvests. As I write my hallway is stacked with Victorian English authors, waiting to go to the charity shop.  This is due to the Yuletide arrival of my shiny new Kindle and the free availability of venerable books, no longer in copyright.  It is also due to the need for shelf space to house the reading library gifted to my kids this Christmas if there is to be any chance of  books being put back on shelves once they've been looked at.

Thus enthused by the desire for clear outs and fresh starts, I've cast my pruning eye upon the contents of my wardrobe, my library of ancient university folders and anything else that has lurked in a cupboard, untouched, for years gone by.

Nor has my seed box been exempt. I've made my annual lists of what I've got and ever-growing wish lists of what I'd like to grow in the forthcoming year.  I've even been online and let my enthusiasm run away with me in the face of tempting seed catalogues.  And I've also evicted things I know I won't plant this year - such as brussel sprouts and  cabbages - brassicas involve too much of my most hated gardening job i.e. netting things. Without such protection it isn't worth bothering with them at the pigeon feasting ground which is the allotment.  Also, brassicas are cheap to buy, take up lots of space and need time to mature into a worthwhile crop.  So…. into the compost bin they went.

Further victims were seeds which I partly sowed last year and which had patchy or non-existent germination rates (probably due to age, or to the cold start to 2013).  Also, where I have lots of seeds for a particular variety, I've put a batch aside to donate to the school gardens.

Everything has been filed, by sowing month, and is looking ready for action. My no-longer compost stained fingers are already itching for activity, twitching towards my packets and waiting longingly for longer days. I am going to be very strict with myself this year and resist the urge to sow until March as last year's incredibly late spring really put paid to any miserable attempts to get ahead. Until light levels increase with the turn of the seasons, we are all fighting against the conditions anyway. I refuse to have a greenhouse full of weedy scraggly things which refuse to prosper until spring arrives: better instead to wait until things can be sowed, raring to go.

Alarm bells for seed savers

My clutter-busting activities also unearthed a letter from Garden Organic, outlining a new EU plant material directive.  As an avid seed saver myself and a member of the Heritage Seed Library (HSL), this legislation seems rather threatening. Along with other seed libraries and small seed producing companies, HSL's work is at risk from a proposed new law to enforce the licensing of all seed production regardless of the quantities sold (or freely exchanged) and the their commercial viability.  It would force seed libraries, small breeders, specialist nurseries and amateur enthusiasts out of the market if the legislation is passed in its current form.  Garden Organic are therefore petitioning for amendments to the proposal for exemptions to be granted for small scale operations and amateur growers, amongst other things.

Support the campaign to amend the legislation

If you would like to find out more about the seed directive and the impacts small seed producers feel it will have, you can follow these links.  They also contain information about lobbying your MEP to register your concerns about the legislation.