The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Blooming tasty
Edible flowers fresh from deepest Devon
THE SUN IS JUST RISING over Jan Billington’s farm in Cullompton, Devon. Dew sits delicately on velvety roses, and a perfume from the more than 150 varieties of flowers she grows fills the air. Two Jack Russells follow Billington as she plucks damask rose heads from their stems, sniffing their Turkishdelight scent, before carefully placing them in a basket ready to be sent out on an overnight courier, destined for a bride and her cake in the morning.
Billington, a warm, smiley host, has been growing organic edible flowers for the past 16 years, but she says it’s only now that the concept has really hit the mainstream. While we’ve grown used to seeing celebrity chefs dotting nasturtiums and cornflowers on plates, the Instagram generation has now caught on, creating beautiful summer party cakes or wedding showstoppers – like the Duchess of Sussex’s cake in May, which was decorated with peonies and roses.
Billington’s business, Maddocks Farm Organics, supplies everyone from hobbyists to professional cake-makers and chefs. She also has bigger clients –
6,000 of Billington’s blooms were used for the Bond film Spectre’s launch party; while she is growing 600 kilos of petals for Tinkture, a Cornish gin company, for its British rose gin.
Orders are made via her website, which details what blooms are in season (‘That doesn’t stop people asking for rose petals in December,’ she says, with a rictus grin). Every week she, along with her new head gardener Bridget Wheeler – formerly head of propagation at Sissinghurst – and a helper or two start picking at 5.30am in the polytunnels when it’s still cool, before moving on to the rose beds outside, boxing up around 40 orders a day. Her customers are always grateful, sending photographs of their baked creations and wedding-day centrepieces. ‘My ambition is that every box of flowers produces a gasp when it’s opened,’ she says.
Despite her passion, which seems to be almost embedded, along with plenty of soil, under her fingernails, Billington hasn’t always been a flower grower. After 15 years in arts consultancy based in London, she says ‘too many episodes of River Cottage’ prompted her to move to Devon to start a farm, along with her husband, Stuart, and their two small children, Oliver and Imogen. ‘I had two preschool children. Stuart [a philatelic expert] was still commuting back to London, and I’d never run a business or farmed before; I must have been clinically insane,’ she says, laughing. She started with vegetable and salad boxes, before moving into edible flowers. She is entirely self-taught. ‘I wouldn’t say I was winging it. I’ve done a lot of reading and research as I’ve gone along,’ she says.
Billington is one of the few suppliers who are both British and organic (she is certified by the Soil Association and has won awards). ‘You’ve got to look after the land. We’re not here for long, so you can’t ride roughshod over it,’ she says. She made the farm as ecofriendly as possible from the outset, with photovoltaic cells on the barn roof to supply electricity; water comes from a spring and is sterilised using UV filters, while waste water is filtered
‘Alliums are fantastic with a tomato and olive salad – like wild garlic on acid’
Elton John’s chef ordered the pretty Salvia Hot Lips, which taste like blackcurrants
through a natural reed-bed system.
Until last month it was a one-woman business, but with sales booming, and her elderly mother to take care of, along with teenagers sitting exams, Billington needed help. So she hired Wheeler, who is now experimenting with crops for next year, including zinnia and aquilegia. ‘It’s exciting thinking about growing plants in an edible context, which is new for me,’ says Wheeler. And Billington, she tells me, is the ideal boss. ‘She’s passionate about self-seeding, so if a plant pops up somewhere, she’s happy to let it grow, instead of being regimented about a scheme. It means that you look around and just see the life of the garden bursting through.’
Which they’re going to need dearly, because, fuelled by Instagram, the business looks set to grow and grow. While this is great news for Billington, she does worry about the trend. ‘Flowers on cakes are hugely popular, but I see so many things on social media that are dangerous, like people decorating with lupins or anemones or sweet peas, all of which can be poisonous. You’ve got to be so careful.’ Even flowers that aren’t poisonous – roses, for example – shouldn’t be used in food if they’re from a florist: ‘Some of them are sprayed up to 90 times with a whole arsenal of chemicals that are not designed to be eaten. So even if you remove them before eating, it’s not good for you.’
While flowers for wedding cakes and cocktail parties (Elton John’s chef ordered the pretty Salvia Hot Lips, which taste like blackcurrants and perch delicately on the rim of a glass) are ‘where the money’s at’, Billington is more interested in the unsung heroes, such as alliums, which she says are ‘fantastic with a tomato and olive salad – they’re like wild garlic on acid’. Or rocket flowers, which ‘pack a real punch, making them perfect with dishes such as red meats, pastas and cheese’. Local businesses love her blooms too, with caterer Pickle Shack using them for cocktails and cured fish, and Blushing Cook adorning cake commissions with petals and leaves. (Their recipes feature on these pages.)
As she returns her secateurs to her apron pocket, Billington says her job ‘is the best in the world. My office is a polytunnel and I spend all day picking flowers. What could be nicer than that?’ maddocksfarmorganics.co.uk