From seed to stall.

Gardening for one of my clients yesterday, we got chatting about jobs and the bits of them that we don't see.  Her husband is a retired gemologist and used to choose the raw stones to be cut and set by one of Birmingham's fine jewellery companies.  It's a long journey from a lump of rock to a finely cut sapphire and we were musing on how little we think about what goes into the various end products that we use or wear everyday - and its the same with a bunch of flowers.

When my stall is set up for markets, people constantly murmur and exclaim about how pretty it all looks (and smells, if I'm not set up next to a generator or sausage stall!!) and that, I guess, is combined result the loveliness of flowers, and the art of presenting them.  But behind that visual appeal, what makes them different from other flower stalls?

Firstly, they are all locally grown - cut the night before market and kept in the cool and dark to be fully hydrated before being arranged early the next day.  Secondly, they are different because I can offer varieties which aren't currently commercially grown on a huge scale because they're more delicate and don't travel brilliantly well - cornflowers have flown out of my buckets in the past few markets.  And thirdly, I love them!  I know their names, and in many cases I've watched them grow from seedlings, picked them, arranged them  and I'm sending them forth into the world to spread the word about British flowers.

I had a huge smile on my face at the last market when a gentleman, who'd bought a bunch of cornflowers and tansy daisies as  one of my first customers of the day, came rushing back half an hour later saying that they'd looked so gorgeous in his house that he come back for more flowers for his kitchen!    The two florists who've used them for wedding photo shoots recently have both said that my flowers had also stolen the show from their commercial counterparts, attracting universal oohs and aahs about their natural charms.

But it makes me smile, somewhat wryly, when people call them 'wild flowers' - having them on the stall (and in the garden) involves a bit more than a happy accident!  I know they mean that the flowers look natural, relaxed and just gorgeous in themselves, with that freshly picked feel (that's because they are).

So I thought I'd share the market day of some Tuckshop Flowers:

The evening before market, as the day fades and cools, the best blooms are picked and inspected, then left to fully hydrate in  water overnight.

Very early next morning- arranging and bunching begins - with a fortifying cup of tea.

 8.30am - the welcoming sights and smells of Tuckshop Flowers are ready for market opening time.

Come rain, come shine, the market bustles and there's lots of chat to be had about flowers with interested customers.

Any leftovers get labelled up with my details on lovely new cards (from Moo) and are sent out to work to do some marketing for me. They're delivered to hand-picked local cafes to spread the word about British flowers so when the last delivery of the day is done, finally it's time for sit down with a well-earned cup of tea!   And I wouldn't have things any other way…..

I've just ordered a copy of 'Gilding the Lily' - a book about the journey of imported cut flowers to market, and I think it is going to be a very different kind of read from the one above.

How does my garden grow?

The most common comment I get on my market stall is:

 "Marmite jars!  What a good idea!"

The second most common is:

"Your garden must be lovely."

I think seeing a stall full of cottage garden flowers, people are intrigued as to where they have come from.  So for those of you who want a sneaky peek into the Tuckshop Garden, walk this way.

Before….

When we moved into this house, the garden was wall-to-wall lawn, with a few trees, tired shrubs and lots of ground elder and conifers.  First stop, tree surgeons.  In with the chainsaws and down with the conifers.  Light reached the soil and things started to grow - as did the ground elder (and still does - grrrr).  With every passing year, the amount of lawn is reduced and planting areas extended - much to the disgust of my eldest son who has a passion for petrol-powered lawn mowers.

Some time after….

Even since this photo was taken, the planting areas have extended:  the expansive patio has now been reduced - a significant number of slabs have come out, and a largish border created in their place, further bringing the garden right up to the house.

It is a place of constant change - every season brings different flowers, and every year brings new areas coming under development, or old areas which had been left to their own devices getting a significant overhaul.  The one thing I've learned in my gardening life is that plants don't last forever.  And when they start to run out of steam, I'm afraid I'm quite ruthless.  Get them out, take cuttings or divide them where possible, and put something else in to fill the gaps.

Last week was spent culling all the aquilegia which put on such a lovely spring display.  But I know if I leave them in with their shapely seed heads rattling in the breeze, next year I'll have an forest of Granny's Bonnets nodding at me.  Pretty though that may be, I don't want the garden to be a mono-culture, so out with the secateurs and off with their heads.  And more often than not, out with their roots too to make way for some of my current crop of maturing seedlings  which are begging to be planted out.  It's the only way to keep things productive and to keep colour coming later in the season.

The tulips in my raised bed on the patio have been over planted with dahlias and sweet peas and these are now just starting to flower.  I'm so pleased I took the sledgehammer to this particular area of concrete as I now have something much nicer to look at out of my kitchen window.

  

I've got a tulip catalogue on my desk and a wish list in my head - so am already plotting and scheming about where I can make my tulip bed next spring, and what to use the raised bed for instead.  Tulips don't really flower brilliantly after they've been in for a couple of years, so the ones above are due for replenishment.  I always feel a bit guilty for abandoning flower stocks that have served me well, but getting them out gives me chance to put some goodness back into the soil with compost, leaf mould, manure and other such additions.  And as soon as the replacement plants start to flourish, I'm afraid I never look back!

So don't be afraid to overhaul scruffy patches, or be lenient with tired plants.  Prune them, split them or chuck them - but do these jobs in spring or autumn if you want them to regenerate elsewhere in the garden.

If you want to see more pictures of the garden, visit my Pinterest board.

This post has reminded me that I need to take some more photos of the garden as it is now - I've got lots of flower photos, but not so many of the garden as a whole.  Next project….

Wordless Wednesday - Glorious June

On being a flower ninja

I'm a flower ninja.

Today I planned and staged a stealth attack on Bully, the Bullring's favourite son, and snazzed him up with a rosy crown to celebrate British Flowers Week. Eat your heart out Lana Del Rey.

Along with my fellow ninja, Judith, I sneaked through the city centre, secreting posies around Brummie landmarks as part of the Lonely Bouquet initiative.  Like wartime evacuees , the flowers were sent forth with cardboard labels round their necks, asking to be rehomed. So far I know that one of them has ended up in Warwickshire, delighting the shopper who found it on her birthday; and another posy has come home to roost not more than a mile from me.  I await news of the other lost souls.

With my twitter fingers recovering from their overtime, and febrile Facebooking leaving me limp, I'm left happy and slightly knackered, reflecting on a brilliant day.  I can't think of a nicer way to conduct marketing or to bring a smile to people's faces.  And great fun to work with another flowerbod on the project too, so thanks again go to Mrs Pollen Floral Joy.

British Flowers are just gorgeous and it wasn't hard to spread a bit of Mrs Pollen and the Tuckshops' flowery delight.  I know we ninjas were infected by it too.

Photo courtesy of Pollen Floral Joy

Wordless Wednesday - A whole lot of Rosy.

Natural fizz - Elderflower Champagne

Elderflowers.  I get slightly obsessed with using them each year but sometimes their frothy white flowers are already going slightly brown and crispy before I get organised enough to do anything about it.  But not in 2014!  I already have a batch of lemony tangy elderflower cordial in the freezer, and now it is champagne time.

If you want to follow suit, scour the hedgerows now as (in the Midlands at least) the flowers are just starting - so you should have at least a couple of weeks to get yourself geared up to make it.

I can remember my aunty making this in the early '80s and being very impressed as a teenager that you could produce a fizzy drink without the aid of the ubiquitous Soda Stream - a mod con which never got over the threshold of our house. If a television couldn't make it through the front door, I suppose a Soda Stream didn't stand a chance!

In the process of making this, I've also discovered that being a regular flower picker has the advantage of always having that rare beast, a clean bucket, to hand.  You'll need one for this recipe.

Gather together:

A clean bucket
36 heads of elderflowers (with as few bugs attached as possible!)
4.5 litres of water
680 grammes of sugar
2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
1 lemon - zest and juice needed (no pith).
Strong bottles (flip top ones good for this, or strong brewing bottles) - sterilised.



To make it: (WARNING: highly technical)

Chuck everything in the bucket and leave for  24 hours.  After this time, strain the liquid through muslin and bottle it.  The liquid will be a bit cloudy - this is normal.  Once bottled, it will start to generate fizz which you will need to release every now and then so that your bottles don't explode. Leave for about 2 weeks.

Serve chilled on a sunny day.


I think I'm going to try adding a squeeze of lime, chunks of ice and a slug of gin to make an Elderflower Tom Collins cocktail with some of mine.

Roll on summer.

Wordless Wednesday - Flowers for a relaxed English wedding

Two weddings and a planting session.

Gearing up for a two wedding weekend and my garden is living up to the challenge.  This early warm spring has brought everything on really early this year - my roses are bursting into bloom which I don't usually expect til June. Perfect for filling teacups with for Wedding Two on Sunday - hooray.

The visiting florist for Wedding One requires English cottage garden flowers in blue, yellow, purple and white.  Each colour box is ticked and I've just realised that my crop of buttercups at the allotment might have a purpose after all!  Those glossy, dainty and luminous flowers will make a perfect filler in country wedding bunches.

Had a good session at the plot today, planting out dahlias. It really makes me feel like summer is on the way when I take the plunge and put these South American visitors in their final flowering positions.  Have got half a bed full at the moment  - just twenty five more plants to go!  The success of dahlias at the allotment last year made me realise how much they love having lots of sunshine and space in which to extend themselves.  The plants I put in mixed borders at home were nowhere near as productive, so that is one lesson to chalk up to experience.

Am using the newly emptied end of the border in the back garden for dahlias as well - the soil is rich with compost as the bins have been standing on this area for several years, and it has been completely emptied, so will give the dahlias breathing space.

Have interspersed the home dahlias with American Potomac snapdragons - the seed was probably more expensive than gold dust, but the baby snaps are looking sturdy now that the weather has warmed up and it is surely time to give them their head.  From £15 worth of seed, I've got 24 plants - wasn't quick enough to whip them out of the propagator initially, so lost quite a lot of seedlings to damping off - they just flopped and shrivelled in the warm fug of their enclosure.   Another lesson learned which has stood me in good stead with the seed trays that followed them - at the first sign of germination, the lid came off and everything thrived much better.  Pity I didn't sow cheap seed first mind!

Cosmos have also been planted out into the garden today after a couple of weeks coming in and out of the greenhouse to toughen up their stems.  Hopefully they've developed a bit of woody resilience as a first line of defence against marauding molluscs.

Must try to sow a tray a day for the rest of May to keep the flower borders well stocked later in the season and to avoid the July hiatus which usually overtakes me.

Rain is forecast tomorrow and I welcome it as two of my waterbutts are now empty.  It will also hydrate my flowers beautifully before I chop them for Wedding One on Thursday evening if all goes to plan.  Let's just hope the slugs don't come out for a feast before I can get to them…

The roses return.

East Ruston Old Vicarage

It's not everyday you see a lighthouse through the hedge. But at East Ruston Old Vicarage, the many sneaky peeks borrowed from the Norfolk landscape beyond serve to mock the digital zoom on my phone camera and leave me pining for the heavy DSLR camera I've left at home.  The regret grows as I walk around this stunning garden, a photographers' paradise with its clever contrasts between restraint and exuberance, and find floral thunderbolts to zap me at virtually every turn.  Vistas, walkways with dramatic topiary shadows, contrasting textures and rivulets of colour abound.  I walk, grateful to live in the digital age, unconstrained by the number of exposures on a roll of film.  It's a relief for my trigger finger to come across areas newly cleared or cut back for regeneration - a break from having my mind boggled by plants and design-envy.

And it's also a sign that this is a garden on the move - no resting on laurels here.

Weaving through the maze like garden rooms, there is  always something to draw you on - viewpoints are cut, window-like into carefully tended hedges:  St Mary's Church in the neighbouring village of Happisburgh is the focal point of a series of consecutive hedge windows, while the much-photographed view of the Happisburgh lighthouse is framed by greenery and big East Anglian skies.

This is a garden that makes you smile. And go 'OOOOOOH!'. And gasp in astonishment. Sometimes all at once.  The owners, Graham Robeson and Alan Gray, say that visitors may find the planting either shocking or soothing, but their eye for form, structure and colour rarely goes astray.  

When I visited, the Rembrant tulip displays in the Dutch Garden were fading, but gave an inkling of the glorious display which they must have made in their pomp during the previous weeks.  Stuffed into the spaces in disciplined topiary, they reminded me of red and yellow football fans yelling from within terraced enclosures. More restrained tulips preened, still silky and sleek: Queen of the Night and a variety with petals the colour of cinder toffee combined with studied ease to complement their mossy terracotta container.

(If you'd like to see these and more photos of the East Ruston, you can visit my Pinterest board.)




Tree peonies were the flower of the moment - the yellow 'lutea' and unnamed, fragrant pink and deep cerise varieties with blooms the size of your head.  Sharp intakes of breath (metaphorical and literal) when approaching those.  If anyone out there knows the variety name, please share!  Even Alan Gray says it is long lost when I tweeted him to try to discover it.







Covering a total of 32 acres, the East Ruston Old Vicarage garden is a joy. At first I thought the Mediterranean garden was my favourite, with the delicious racemes of cascading wisteria dripping from the walls of a small brick sumer house, but on entering the Arizona themed Desert Garden, my allegiances shifted again. Initially, I was taken simply by the plants and set out to capture their portraits, but discovered that when photographed and compressed into two dimensions, the Desert Garden becomes something really special: its layers and colours and textures blending like an embroiderer's dream to form a deep rich tapestry - not at all what I first saw when looking at the dry river bed and acid green hummocks of euphorbias

But its not just the garden rooms of this vicarage that are special - even the hallways and corridors are designed with consummate care: who wouldn't want an entrance hall like this?

or a carpet to emulate the one below?

 But just when you've decided that precision and formality are the strengths of the design (and you'd be right), you come across places where nature is allowed just to do its thing - except it has to keep off the paths - and it's brilliant!

With my tastebuds still hankering after the delicate delights of the lavender and lemon polenta cake from the tearooms, I'll leave you with my departing view of the gardens. Not a topiary in sight, just glorious flowers.

Disorderly conduct

I know as a grower of cut flowers I'm supposed to grow in rows.  But while my back garden provides most of my flowers, I'm still primarily a gardener and a garden is what I grow.  So rather than rows, I've got my usual scramble of patches and blobs - which mean that picking takes longer and I perhaps don't get as much out of the garden as I could in terms of harvests.  But the compensation is that I still can look out on a tapestry of flowers, which comes together as much from luck as from judgement and design.

Blue is the colour at the moment with swathes of bluebells in the shady dry patch under the trees at the bottom of the garden and forgetmenots squiggling their way through any other bits they can fling their seed into.  The vivid blue centaurea or annual cornflower is just coming into flower now as well and the irises will be the next thing to take over the blue baton in the flowery relay.

I've even got roses coming into bud and it's only early May.  Don't usually expect to see that until early June so it's a sign of how mild and warm the winter has been despite the wet.

My greenhouse is full and I've still got lots of things to prick out from their trays - planting seedlings into individual pots for them to grow on big and strong.  I love that job but never fail to be horrified when I realise how much more space they're going to take up.  Mind you, when I look at the hundreds of rudbeckia seedlings that have germinated so brilliantly, I quake at the thought of potting them up!  Only some of them are going to get done as I'd need to be a large scale producer to have the space for all of them.  Wonder if any friends would like some?  I'm sure some of my gardening clients might have space to rehome a few when they're a bit bigger.

Snails seem to be very happy in the garden at present and have munched through a fair number of my baby stocks and have been snacking on dahlia leaves in the cold frame.  It pays to check on the latter regularly as it is easy to get on the molluscs slimy trail and to locate and subsequently squish them.

Have also been purging the blackfly which have set up camp on my centaurea.  Sprayed the whole area with soap solution and blasted the plants with a strong spray from the hosepipe yesterday to force the aphids to release their evil grip on the soft stems.  The plant looked a little shocked initially, but has now regained an upright position and seems non the worse for its ordeal.

Centuarea - now free of pests.