Britain’s thriving flower farmers prove that local blooms are best
A new wave of female flower farmers have spotted a huge demand for fresh local cut flowers. By Arabella St John Parker
Yorkshire flower farmer Gill Hodgson (pictured below) is a bit of heroine in the world of Britishgrown cut flowers. Her story begins in 2010. Like so many other British farmers at the time, Gill was casting around for a new source of income for her family farm in Everingham, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where she grew up with her parents and grandparents. She still farms here today with her children and, in recent months, has been running “Granny School” each morning for her three young grandchildren, aged three, four and five.
“It’s mostly running around, singing songs and drawing, but counting the cows’ legs, naming the flowers and finding worms counts as a bit of maths, botany and biology,” says Gill. She explains what happened in 2010:
“I decided to experiment by growing garden flowers in amongst some of our fields of vegetables,” she recalls. “I had an idea that I’d sell them from a table at the end of the lane … just a few bunches of flowers and an honesty box.
“I didn’t charge very much – a pound a bunch to cover the cost of the seeds, I think – and I had no interaction with the people buying them, but I was amazed to find every single one of the bunches had gone by the end of the day.”
Encouraged, Gill decided to take her flowers to nearby Driffield Market, to see how sales went there. That first Saturday, she was staggered to find her stall quickly surrounded by queues of enthusiastic marketgoers all eager to dip their noses into the bunches of freshly cut blooms and demanding to know what was the name of this, and of
‘When I saw the looks of pleasure on people’s faces, I thought, there’s a real business opportunity’ ’
that, and who had grown them, how, and where?
“Imported blooms, which at the time accounted for 90 per cent of the cut flowers sold in Britain, have had the scent bred out of them to make them last longer, and most people had forgotten what locally grown, freshly picked, seasonal British flowers looked or smelt like,” says Gill. “When I saw the looks of sheer pleasure on people’s faces, I thought, there’s a real business opportunity here.”
Her flowers had become the “new exotics” in the area, and inspired by this clear interest in provenance and desire for local produce and having found her target market, Gill turned a spare acre over entirely to flower production and named her new income stream Fieldhouse Flowers (fieldhouseflowers.co.uk).
Growing and selling the flowers was one thing, but Gill wanted to share her excitement about the possibilities for British flowers with other like-minded growers. After a fruitless search for an organisation to join, Gill decided to set something up herself, and in February 2011, she registered Flowers from the Farm (flowersfromthefarm.co.uk) as a not-for-profit association.
The idea was simple: encourage more people to grow cut flowers for market in Britain, promote British flowers to the public, and foster a support network for the growers. “I was aiming for 40 to 50 members and, with no social media to speak of, I sent a press release to my local NFU. Within days, I was photographed for the Yorkshire Post, and BBC Look North filmed me for its breakfast
‘I‘We’re here to support and encourage, to share knowledge’
‘My plot is next to a footpath and people stop to admire it and want to come in – it feels as if you’re always creating a gift. That’s not something I planned to get out of it, but it’s so rewarding.’ AIZEL FINCH, yalhamhayes.com
t’s almost 10 years since I decided to give up my job as a teacher in adult education, set up Tuck Shop Flowers and join Flowers from the Farm,” says Carole Patilla, who grows flowers for weddings and funerals, events and workshops, in her back garden and on another small plot near the village of Bournville. She became area rep for the West Midlands just six months into her FFTF membership and is now a co-chairman.
“Ten years on, the association has more experience and knowledge to offer, which is good for the British cut-flower industry overall as well as for our members. While we’re not able to help people find the land they need to set up a business, we can advise them on things such as reasonable rents if they’re leasing a plot; help them bring barren land into cultivation; and we can help them scale up their business.”
Choosing what flowers to grow partly depends on what you want to grow, but having a business plan and knowing where you will sell the blooms is essential, be it to your local florist or a wholesaler, for instance, for weddings only or direct to the public.
“We don’t proscribe, although we do have a lot of programme.” The Yorkshire Horticultural Society saw the coverage and asked Gill if she would bring FFTF to the Great Yorkshire Show that same summer. “They also invited me to present Prince Charles and Camilla with a buttonhole and a corsage,” she remembers. “I’d never made a corsage before, but I did it by torchlight at the campsite, surrounded by 500 young farmers dancing, drinking and singing!”
As her own flower sales took off locally, applications to join FFTF also began to roll in, and by the end of 2011, it had 25 members. That number rose to 140 in 2012 and 500 in 2018. This week, as the growers gather for its annual conference online, and to celebrate FFTF’s 10th anniversary, there are almost 1,000 of them listed on the association’s interactive website map.
The business model was vital to that early success, says Gill: “It wasn’t aimed at women in particular, but they picked up the idea fastest because it suits many circumstances – caring for young shared values; most members, for instance, grow without chemicals and don’t use foam products,” says Carole. “We’re here to support and encourage, to share knowledge and advice – members visit each other and talk constantly via the private Facebook page – but we don’t regulate or monitor.”
With an eye on the future, FFTF has recently launched a diversity scholarship programme and the first five recipients – Anais CarrilloHawkins, Andrea Ferdinand, Elsie Harp, Charlotte Merryweather and Jenny Yeong – will receive materials and start a unique programme of mentorship and training created by FFTF that will help kickstart their careers as flower farmers. “There were so many brilliant and strong submissions,” adds the Diversity Action Group’s Milli Proust, “and all this year’s applicants will be able to join an online Q&A session about setting up a business, and applications for the second set of scholarships will open at the end of 2021.”
Being self-employed is not for everyone – the realities of working in a field, often on your own, can be a huge eye-opener for some. But for most, the excitement that comes from being outside, sticking hands in soil and working with the seasons, sowing, growing, harvest and preparing fresh, healthy, wiggly, relaxed, beautiful flowers for sale is irresistible.
CAROLE PATILLA tuckshopflowers.com
“Delicate flowers are a million times better if they’re home grown – they’re stronger, fresher and don’t get squashed in transit – and growing our own has made our business more profitable and sustainable.” children or elderly parents, working part-time, or starting a second career – and you don’t need huge funding, just enough money for the seed. I also think it was the timing. People were increasingly concerned about our carbon footprint and about provenance and production methods for food, and applying the same thinking to flowers was the logical next step.”
As interior designers moved away from industrial and glossy corporate looks in favour of soft natural materials and a more individual, craft-influenced style, florists were championing naturalistic flower arrangements, and Shane Connolly’s overnight transformation of Westminster Abbey for the royal wedding in April 2011, using living English field maples and hornbeam and armfuls of fragrant lily of the valley to bring the English countryside into town, sent the message loud and clear.
It all confirms that, for the last decade, Gill and FFTF have been very much in tune with the zeitgeist.
“I was a complete novice and switching careers, but when I walked into my first regional FFTF meeting, it was as if a big family of like-minded, fabulous people had put their arms around me. They offer knowledge and TLC, are there to bounce ideas around, help me with my website … I’d never be without them now.”
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“Sixty years ago, there were cut-flower growers all across the country, but when they went, their knowledge went with them. Now, the FFTF network is filling that gap, rebuilding the sector.”
“You can spend so much time on your own in the field, but being able to talk to fellow FFTF farmers, on the Facebook page or at a regional meeting, it really drives you on. They offer different views, different approaches, advice, support – I wouldn’t have stuck at it if it had been just me on my own.”