Readers’ gardens

I’m a cut flower grower/ gardener based in Bristol. I was inspired to grow flowers for a living by my summer working at Fern Verrow, a beautiful biodynamic farm in Herefordshire, where my role, on Thursdays, was to cut the dahlias.

I’m very lucky to have some space in a good friend’s half acre garden on the outskirts of Bristol, where I’ve also accumulated some lovely gardening clients – their neighbours!

I grow a mixture of perennials and annuals, such as cosmos, cornflowers, scabious, feverfew, bronze fennel, salvias, dahlias, rosemary, lavender, peonies and, my absolute favourite, Verbena bonariensis. My main outlet for the flowers is providing flower buckets for weddings, creating table jamjars for birthdays and I’ve a market stall in Bath and Frome once a month. Things don’t always go to plan though! This year the snow in March meant germination rates in the polytunnel weren’t usual and I had to sow quite a few annuals again due to the cold weather. Also roe deer really love to munch on my flowers, especially the ranunculus I’d been growing for a wedding!

At the moment I’m enjoying harvesting my peach foxgloves, feverfew, nigella and sweet Williams and have been planting out tithonia, scabious, cosmos and tending to my dahlias, which are looking very healthy.

I really get a lot out of gardening – it definitely is a soul cleanser and lifts the mood.

To order some homegrown cut flowers in the Bristol area, email Gill on gill@gillsbarrow.com.

I use foxgloves a lot and, right, flower buckets on their way to a happy home!

I’ve got lots of flowers on the go on my plot and in the polytunnel too

Here’s a bunch I made earlier, with dahlias, cosmos, sunflowers and more

Here’s my market stall – I sell my flowers at weekends in and around Bristol

Roe deer love to snack on my flowers

Has a cut flower plot on the edge of Bristol which is packed with colourful flowers, many of which are sown from seed