The Cut Flower Podcast

Blossoming Ventures: Navigating the Joys and Challenges of Flower Farming

• Roz Chandler / Roz - The Wild Zinnia / Moranda Michaelis • Season 1 • Episode 70

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Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

Welcome to the Cutflower Podcast!

In this episode, join me, Roz Chandler, as I delve into the fascinating world of flower farming with my guests Roz from The Wild Zinnia and Miranda Michaelis. Together, we explore the highs and lows, the practicalities, and the passion behind this blooming industry.

Summary:

Roz and Miranda candidly discuss the intricacies of flower farming, starting from the essential considerations of time management and financial planning. They emphasise the importance of setting clear goals and working backwards to achieve them, while also acknowledging the unpredictable nature of revenue in this field.

The conversation highlights the diverse skill set required for success in flower farming, including marketing, technology management, accounting, and customer service. Both guests share their personal challenges and triumphs, from dealing with pests and biodiversity issues to finding joy in seeing their creations bring happiness to others.

Key Takeaways

  1. Time Management: Determine how much time you can commit to flower farming and align your goals accordingly.
  2. Financial Planning: Set clear financial goals and work backwards to create a sustainable business model.
  3. Diverse Skill Set: Flower farming requires proficiency in marketing, technology, accounting, and customer service, in addition to horticultural knowledge.
  4. Embrace Collaboration: Seek support and mentorship from experienced individuals to navigate challenges and accelerate growth.
  5. Passion and Purpose: Find fulfillment in the creative process and the joy of bringing beauty to others' lives.

Join us as we uncover the secrets to flourishing in the world of flower farming!

Don't forget to connect with Roz from The Wild Zinnia and on Instagram @wildzinniabristol and Miranda Michaelis from Pied Beauty Flowers  and on Instagram @piedbeautyflowrs for more insights and inspiration. 

Thanks for tuning in to the Cutflower Podcast!

First Tunnels, leaders in domestic and commercial product tunnels. 


The Cutflower Podcast EP70

[00:00:00] Roz Chandler: I am delighted today to welcome two flower farmers to our podcast. And this month we're running a series to highlight the lives, the very ups and downs of flower farmers and at all stages of their business. So Roz, let's start with you. Tell us how many years you've been flower farming and a little bit about your business.

[00:00:21] Roz Chandler: Besides you grow on where you are, just tell us a little bit about your business, what it's called and where you are. That would be brilliant. 

[00:00:28] Roz: Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me. We're really glad to be here and talking about our journey into flower farming. And we, so there's myself and my business partner Debs, and we are in our fourth year of running our flower farm.

[00:00:41] Roz: We are on our second year on our current site. So we actually started on allotments. Which you can talk a little bit more about later, but we now have a quarter of an acre on a designated farm that is for us. And we grow within the season of we start about now in March with our hellebores and then we grow until October, November with our chrysanthemum.

[00:01:02] Roz: We grow a range of everything in between.

[00:01:05] Roz: Oh yes, my business is The Wild Zinnia. We are just outside Bristol, just north of Bristol, in a little village called Tockington. It's the first bit of countryside you get to if you drive north west of Bristol.

[00:01:17] Roz: And yeah, it's a lovely little location. 

[00:01:21] Roz Chandler: Brilliant. We'll talk more about how the two of you got together and why you decided to become flower farmers in a while. Miranda, tell us about you, where you're based, what you do, how big you grow over, how long you've been doing it, just to put some context to it.

[00:01:35] Miranda Michaelis: Hi, thank you for having me. It's interesting to talk about this, especially because I work alone, so 

[00:01:41] Roz Chandler: often my thoughts are in my head, so it's incredibly nice to voice them 

[00:01:44] Miranda Michaelis: with another flower person who 

[00:01:46] Roz Chandler: really likes talking about flowers. So my 

[00:01:49] Miranda Michaelis: business is called Pie Beauty Flower Farm, named after one of my favorite poets, 

[00:01:54] Miranda Michaelis: Poems by Gerald Manley Hopkins, which is a beautiful ode to nature.

[00:01:59] Miranda Michaelis: And my business has been going for about three, this is my third year in business. The first year, I really just did farm shop deliveries. The second year I did subscriptions and some bouquets and the odd event. And then as every flower farmer, I think you evolve each year. And this year I I do, I'm doing a lot more buckets, event buckets of curated buckets that look beautiful together.

[00:02:24] Miranda Michaelis: Whether people collect them from the farm or on a subscription basis and moving into some workshops because I live on a really beautiful farm and I just want to use the space that I've got outside and take people into the woods and into all the natural areas where I can pick foliage from as well as on my flower farm which I have built raised beds mainly and I've got 500 meters squared of exact beds that it's spread through and around 

[00:02:53] Roz Chandler: my home.

[00:02:54] Roz Chandler: Yeah. Wow, and where did you say your farm was? 

[00:02:58] Miranda Michaelis: It's in near Thame in Oxfordshire, so South 

Oxfordshire. 

[00:03:02] Roz Chandler: Yeah, so not that far from us in Milton Keynes. Quite a nice area to be flower farming in. 

[00:03:08] Miranda Michaelis: Yes, it could be. It's lovely, but I've got great soil, so that's my great thing. I'm on a farm with really quite sandy soil.

[00:03:14] Miranda Michaelis: So even in this environment, Whether I have not got really boggy, the beds are all fine. So I feel very lucky. I've got a 

[00:03:21] Roz Chandler: big advantage there. Yeah, definitely. So Roz, talking again about you, what markets, what do you do? What do you grow? Who do you sell to? How have you developed? Cause it does change, doesn't it?

[00:03:33] Roz Chandler: Like you said, we evolve, don't we? Into different areas and think I'm not going to do that anymore. Oh, I'm going to do lots more of that. What markets do you do? Where do you cover? 

[00:03:41] Roz: Absolutely. It's very true to say that you need to evolve each year and you need to evaluate who and what you're supplying and find what fits for you.

[00:03:49] Roz: At the moment our our main customer, our main income streams come from selling to wholesale studio florists and wedding florists. And then we also do our own weddings as well. And those typically are your bouquets, buttonholes. And table arrangements that people can collect on the Friday.

[00:04:07] Roz: We're very much trying to build this business around our lives and what works for us. And so one of those things is keeping our weekends free for our young families. So we, despite really wanting to do lovely big weddings, actually find that it is better for us to do smaller weddings, that then the brides and grooms can collect the flowers on the Friday.

[00:04:26] Roz: So those are our two big income streams. And then we make it up with retail bouquets. To fill in the gaps. And we also do mix buckets and workshops along the way. It's taken us a while, I think, to find that formula. When we grew on a smaller site, we couldn't supply as much to florists.

[00:04:43] Roz: That, that didn't work for us. And we did a lot more retail bunches which is great, but actually, because we were starting on allotments and working from home, actually, there's quite a lot of upheaval in doing bouquets retail bouquets. And actually, there isn't a massive Margin quickly.

[00:04:58] Roz: There's not much margin on them and you're competing against high streets in some ways. So whilst we liked doing them and joined doing them, actually we found quite a lot of time and wasn't a particularly efficient use of the space, the resources, and our flowers. So we very much moved into the direction of weddings, which we really loved doing.

[00:05:15] Roz: And then as we grew. We were able to supply more to wedding florists and we specialise in doing beautifully curated buckets where they can get lots of little bits of this, little bits of that, mixed, in mixed buckets. And we've got a really good relationship with our with wedding florists in Bristol, and so we're going out a bit to Somerset and over to Wales as well.

[00:05:36] Roz: So yeah, that's where our 

[00:05:37] Roz Chandler: customers are. Yeah. And that's interesting, isn't it? Cause you create a business initially, you don't probably create it for what the life you want to have. So you do all this sort of things. Like I found, for instance, very early on with bouquets that unless it's bouquets is a volume business, really.

[00:05:52] Roz Chandler: And unless you're doing lots going out and picking or cutting and conditioning for two bouquets, for instance, and then wrapping them and delivering them was no margin in it. And that became the realization that it was easier in some respects to do buckets or easier to do, I particularly like doing funerals because, I know that's a lot of things to say, but I do doing funerals because it has a specified date in the future in quite a short time frame.

[00:06:17] Roz Chandler: And creating it for someone who's past is actually a really beautiful thing to do. So I actually, my number one would be funerals. We do, and my number two would be big weddings because I can do the weekends because my children are older. So it's all about creating a life that allows you to do the things you want to do, because initially I think you do everything because somebody says, do you want to jump?

[00:06:39] Roz Chandler: You say, yeah, how high? And then all of a sudden you realize it's not actually what you wanted to do. So it's quite interesting you saying about building a business around you, which is. quite important. 

[00:06:49] Roz: Yeah, I think it's really important to try everything once as well, to some extent. You'll make lots of mistakes, if you can fail a little and fail often, that's probably quite good ethos to have, but it means that you can try something and you know whether it's a fit for you or not.

[00:07:02] Roz: And I think where we started and what we thought we were going to do in four years ago is quite different to how we are growing now. And I think that's because we've realised where our red lines are. And what we're prepared to flex on and what we're not, and I think you can only learn that by doing it.

[00:07:18] Roz Chandler: Agreed. How about you, Miranda? What do you do? What markets do you cover? What do you do? What's your year look like? 

[00:07:25] Miranda Michaelis: I'm still actually finding my way so much in, where I want to put my main attention. What I really like doing is curated Buckets of I particularly trying to create things that you couldn't normally get from a florist and I like to do I quite often, my subscriptions are they're pretty opulent, but wild at the same time, very natural.

[00:07:46] Miranda Michaelis: And I do love doing that and bringing the sort of beauty and joy into a home. And, um. But I do a little bit of everything. I do deliver to florists. I do the odd bouquet. I love teaching. I love letting people know how to do it themselves. I do really enjoy that. And Letting them know, that not all seeds just germinate if you sprinkle them on the ground.

[00:08:09] Miranda Michaelis: Some have to be buried, some need light, some need cold. I think people just think it's just, oh, you just throw them on and it just happens. It's, it doesn't just happen. I think it is science and I think knowledge and really makes a difference and really helps it be successful. And I love that side of it.

[00:08:26] Miranda Michaelis: And I love.

[00:08:27] Roz Chandler: Yeah, I agree. One of the greatest things I love doing is teaching, teaching online, teaching in person, doing farm days, doing flower farm retreats, which we do twice a year. There's something about teaching, which I love. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? How you find the thing you love doing. And it is a journey.

[00:08:43] Roz Chandler: I've been doing it 15 years. And I still would say something we do this year is not something we did last 

[00:08:48] Miranda Michaelis: year. Yes. What I'm hoping to do this year is have a club where people come onto the farm at different, throughout the months of the year and see the different things that are growing and learn all about those plants because every time they're hung, there'll be something different.

[00:09:03] Miranda Michaelis: So in October, they could learn all about how to plant ranunculus and anemones, which very few people really know. And and then they'll learn about their hardy annual planting and overwintering them and in June they'll learn when to plant, that's the time for biennials. It's something that flower farmers take for granted, but Not everybody knows it and it takes time.

[00:09:24] Miranda Michaelis: And once, I used to be a journalist. So once you've got the information, I always want to try and sort it out and break it down into the simplest possible way of doing things. And so I'd love to share that so people can come pick flowers, but also learn all about them at the same time and how they too could grow them if they 

[00:09:42] Roz Chandler: wanted to.

[00:09:43] Roz Chandler: Yeah, all of us have got a heart, haven't we? That if people grow more, anybody grows more, whether it's just for pleasure or for profit, it will mean that we actually import less. It doesn't matter, whether you're growing in a small garden, whether you're growing in containers, whether you're growing over acres of land, it doesn't matter.

[00:10:00] Roz Chandler: Ultimately, what we're all doing is promoting growing British flowers, isn't it? And growing and using them and buying them. And I also 

[00:10:09] Miranda Michaelis: think it's so important in this day and age of, not using pesticides and not using chemicals on the farm because I really don't think people, fully appreciate how many chemicals are on the plants, flowers that they buy from the supermarket, all the fungicides, all the things to make them last a long time.

[00:10:28] Miranda Michaelis: And it is a contradiction. They look beautiful, they look natural, but they're not, and they're not good for you. So, people go they're a bit cheaper in the supermarket. Yes, they are, but. Maybe, what do you want? Something really good, and not going to cause you any harm or bring, I don't know it's a very, it's very important part for me is being able to do natural flowers, healthy flowers.

[00:10:51] Roz Chandler: I know I read a study quite recently, and it's interesting how your life comes around again. I did a degree in environmental chemistry, so that was a long time ago, I can assure you. And I never intended to really do very much with it, it's just that they gave me a place and I went. And it sounded fun, and that was about the extent of it.

[00:11:08] Roz Chandler: And then I went off and did something else and then I was a marketing director for many years and now I'm concerned about the environment. So it's way back then we knew all the issues. I mean my thesis was on nitrates in fertilizer and how that causes cancer in humans from the water table.

[00:11:25] Roz Chandler: So it was like, hold on a minute, this 80s. And we still haven't really learned all the time. We've moved on so far and we're still doing it. So yeah, there's a big message to be said. Yeah. And I have to 

[00:11:37] Miranda Michaelis: say, I'm passionate about soil. I could talk about soil forever. It was the land gardens that converted me in, first of all, in making compost.

[00:11:45] Miranda Michaelis: And then I've been on their sort of three day courses, conferences with farmers from around the whole of the UK and this amazing woman called Nicole Masters from New Zealand. And yeah. There is so much you can learn and it is so important, it's so important for the food we eat, if food is grown in good, healthy soil, nutritious soil, the food will be more nutritious.

[00:12:08] Miranda Michaelis: Likewise, the flowers will be more nutritious if you grow them in healthy soil. So it really all starts with the soil and, yeah, I'm really grateful to them because they open my eyes to something that is much bigger and more important than, I love the flowers, I love their beauty, but I think the message.

[00:12:24] Miranda Michaelis: Behind the soil and its importance is 

[00:12:27] Roz Chandler: enormous. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I'm a bit of a soil addict by the way, but yes, in exactly the same way. Both of you, let's start with you, Roz. Why did you decide to be a flower farmer? It's a bit of a mad job, let's be honest, and sometimes it's something that you fall into.

[00:12:41] Roz Chandler: I certainly fell into it by accident. And you've got a business partner, haven't you, Roz? How have the two of you got together and what did you decide to 

[00:12:48] Roz: do? Yeah neither of us have got a background in platforming. We were both teachers in another life, before that I was actually an engineer and having done also a chemistry degree, so there's lots of similarities between you and me, Roz.

[00:13:01] Roz: Yeah. So these are all quite different, but actually we all both of us in different ways have I had flowers and gardening at our hearts and Deb's it's a self confessed seedaholic and spent all her pocket money as a child on sort of vegetable seeds and so with myself it was my grandparents that got me into a love of flowers my grandfather's a really keen gardener and had a beautiful garden and Every time I went to go and visit it was almost like a ritual, a tradition.

[00:13:23] Roz: You'd go and do a tour and see all the new plants in the garden with all of us and it culturally just grew up with us. And I think that's certainly true very much of our culture. Like our gardens are just there. Many cultures, they really are at the heart of of what we love and our pastimes.

[00:13:37] Roz: And I think it's just that connection with our past, our connection with the land that is really wonderful, very therapeutic and just a really Kind of a wholesome way to spend your time. And I think it was during lockdown both of us and I had allotments next to each other and I didn't have loads of interest in growing my own veg, I had a bit of my own stuff, but I was more interested in growing flowers and we wanted to see whether we could start a viable business at that point and We tried it as an experiment to see whether it would work for us, and we were overwhelmed by the demand for locally grown flowers in Bristol and yeah, particularly you said just the, there's always a lack of awareness, people don't realize just how detrimental the effects of imported and You know, all the fertilizers and growth hormones are used in plants.

[00:14:23] Roz: And I think having those conversations with people and then realizing that there are alternatives, that there is a growth register around the corner from them people love that. They love learning about it, everyone is really interested in it, people want to talk. When I said I was a teacher, people didn't really want to talk much more about that.

[00:14:39] Roz: They weren't so interested. But the minute I say I'm a father, people just want to know more. And so it's quite, addictive. And it is, it's just addictive. It's just, I, we absolutely love what we do. And I think that it's, yeah, it's quite You just want to share that knowledge, don't you? You want to share that experience with other people and it's just a very wonderful way to sell.

[00:14:56] Roz: It's not all Rozy when it's freezing cold and your fingers are blue and you're knee deep in manure, it's less lovely. But yeah, it's Ayanlaar, it's a pretty good mix. 

[00:15:06] Roz Chandler: If I could do a survey about the amount of teachers who then grow either for pleasure to begin with and then turn it into either side hustle or full business, I reckon it would be enormous because I teach flower farmers on the marketing side and how to grow businesses and that sort of thing and how to be more visible and a huge percentage are ex teachers.

[00:15:31] Roz Chandler: And I'm going to one stage do a survey and work out what it is. They're either teachers or nurses, interestingly. And there must be something in those careers or something in that makes people want to do something different. I don't know what it is. I'm going to research that one. I guess if you're 

[00:15:47] Roz: quite a practical person, like being teachers, you need to be quite creative, you've got to be engaging and you've got to think quite creatively about how to do things.

[00:15:55] Roz: You want to do things with your hands. I think that's certainly where we see a lot, like we, we don't want to be sitting down doing something. We love being very practical and being really creative. And there's so many creative outlets with flowers that yeah, and growing a business as well with that.

[00:16:09] Roz Chandler: Very rewarding. Yeah, we'll talk about this in a minute. Miranda, how did you come into flower farming? It's one of those things, I don't know, was it a conscious decision? What did you decide to do? 

[00:16:20] Miranda Michaelis: No, it wasn't conscious at all. It was almost in spite of myself. I started in, in lockdown.

[00:16:25] Miranda Michaelis: My mother was alone. I wanted to send her some anemones black and white anemones. I found them on the internet. I thought they were really beautiful. And I did send some and then I thought, gosh, maybe I could grow these, beautiful things. And I started researching it and I actually found it incredibly hard to get hold of anemone corns.

[00:16:44] Miranda Michaelis: And I ended up finding out that I thought that I could get some from this place called, we all know now, Floret in America. Yeah. And and it turned out I couldn't cause they couldn't transport them or send them to the UK. But in the meantime, I'd been inquiring about them and they very cleverly had sent me some little short courses on how to grow anemone corns and anemone at three free short little series.

[00:17:11] Miranda Michaelis: And I thought, Oh my, and I became obsessed with trying to do this and wanting to do it. And eventually I did track down some corns in the UK, but it wasn't easy. And I grew them over the winter and they were just amazingly lovely. And by this stage I was, I'd got hooked on Florette. She's a a very, Erin is a very engaging character, a very appealing and rather brilliant.

[00:17:34] Miranda Michaelis: And I ended up signing up for her course, which was how to be a flower farmer. How I, to be honest, I was too busy in lockdown. I couldn't do it, but I did do it the following year. And she starts off saying if you're going to be a flower farmer, you've got to sell flowers. And it was I didn't know that I wanted to sell flowers.

[00:17:50] Miranda Michaelis: I just wanted to grow them . But it goes inside your head. And anyhow, I was delivered a meal during lockdown from a local flower what are they called? Farm shop. And they said, oh, it's beautiful here. And I said, oh, thank you. I'm just starting to grow some flowers. And they went, oh, we are looking for someone to deliver to, to our shop.

[00:18:08] Miranda Michaelis: Will you have, will you have lots? And I went yeah. Thinking not really. Anyhow, so that's how I started. They, I grew more and delivered to them and then my, I just, yeah, carried on and they were very supportive of what I did. 

[00:18:22] Roz Chandler: It's interesting, isn't it, how you all, we all get hooked in a little way.

[00:18:25] Roz Chandler: We might take a half day course or we might just do something online or we might think, oh, wouldn't it be nice to be able to do that? I think I started with three raised beds. Three meters by one meter, just from Power of Horticulture, 15 years ago. And then all of a sudden, it's not free raised beds anymore.

[00:18:42] Roz Chandler: It's Oh, I'd quite to grow that. I'd quite like to grow that. It was definitely a side hustle and then it became a big business. And now I think, Oh my God, how's it got where it is today? So I don't know where we all know. I don't think we know when we start where the journey is going to take us.

[00:18:55] Miranda Michaelis: I don't think so. But I have to say, can I just say one thing that Erin said on her course, and also I've had Georgie Newby of Common Flower and Flowers saying similar things, but when on the beginning of this course she said, first thing you've got to do if you're going to, be a flower farmer or something like that, is work out how much time you want to give to this.

[00:19:13] Miranda Michaelis: Yeah. And how much you want to earn and then work backwards because, it's very easy to see these people with fields and fields of flowers and think that is what flower farming is and I, people have busy lives and I just think that's a really good bit of advice to say how much time have I got?

[00:19:32] Miranda Michaelis: How much do I, what am I doing it for? What do I want to get out of it both in terms of for myself and in terms of financially? 100%. And I'm still 

[00:19:42] Roz Chandler: working out. Yeah. I'm still working out. Are you still working out? When I train flower farmers, I always start with, and if I do one to one mentoring, I always start with what do you want to earn?

[00:19:53] Roz Chandler: What do you need to earn? How much time have you got and what is your life like? And then plot it monthly because there's going to be no months, there's going to be months with very little revenue. So let's say, January and February and okay, December might be Christmas wreaths, but let's have a look at those and work out how you're going to afford to get through that.

[00:20:11] Roz Chandler: And secondly, what's the cash flow modeling look like? And thirdly, can you fill those gaps in some other way? And then almost if you're going to do it, if you've got a full time job, which lots of flower farmers do have to begin with, I say to them give up one day a week of your full time job, and let's say you earn 50, 000, so that one day a week is worth 10, 000.

[00:20:33] Roz Chandler: Can you make 10, 000 flower farming? If you can, then give up two days a week and make it 20, 000 and so on. If you need to make the same income, As you do in your day job, it might take three years to do that. And I'm really realistic about that. So it's yeah, you're right. We're doing fluency was exactly right.

[00:20:52] Roz Chandler: Saying, how do you want, what do you want this to be? And start with that before and work backwards. for sure. But it can get run away with you. Sometimes you do things you didn't think you were going to do and end up working seven days a week. 

[00:21:05] Miranda Michaelis: Of course, I was trying to imagine, but actually it's an obsession more than anything else.

[00:21:10] Miranda Michaelis: I think, you just can't help popping into that greenhouse to see if they've grown a little bit since this morning. It's madness. If my friends saw what I did in the day, they would I think they would think I was quite mad, really.

[00:21:23] Roz Chandler: Let's talk about the highs and lows of running a flower farm. We've all had massive highs and massive lows. Roz, what do you think your greatest challenges or your greatest high has been and your greatest low has been at the moment in flower farming? I 

[00:21:37] Roz: think they, for us, my experience, and our experience is very much, they're two sides of the same coin, really.

[00:21:42] Roz: We certainly notice very much after all the highs, they're often, we keep on it by a low. And, so our high's kind of summarizing them it's Seeing the fruits of all your labor. It's seeing your creations come together and all of that work you've done from planning your what you're going to grow over winter, and seeing colour palettes come together beautifully, and seeing just being really proud of what you've made, seeing the reactions from the brides coming back, particular highlights for us last year, we had one of our wedding florists they, she had a big wedding, and she sourced all of her flowers and foliage from us.

[00:22:15] Roz: And we're quite small scale, so for us that was a real achievement for our, for us we've been supplying her for a while. This is Foxglove Diaries and she's a really talented florist over in South Wales. And it was just a real, a really wonderful thing to showcase. Last Girl Weddings entirely sourced by locally grown flowers, and to have that relationship with her.

[00:22:34] Roz: And then another one was doing a beautiful early spring arrangement for Gardens Illustrated's 30th birthday. That was a really beautiful magnolia blossom kind of arrangement. And it's just seeing all of the planning and the hard work coming together to create a really beautiful garden. I know, installations like that.

[00:22:51] Roz: And then it's a load. You think after a success site, you're going to have the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one, and they're going to keep on coming. And it's actually, there's always a little bit of a come down after the highs. It's quite a natural, I think, cycle of just human emotions.

[00:23:04] Roz: And I think we've learned to predict them coming to recognize that actually after a really busy season, we're often quite quiet afterwards for various reasons. And it's How have you utilized those to keep us moving forward? I think this is where we often reflect on how what a lesson is to be doing it together and how at various points if we weren't together to be a sounding board to each other and to pick each other off and to now control the S along again.

[00:23:27] Roz: Or to keep us in check when we're suggesting something a little bit ludicrous or wacky.

[00:23:31] Roz: But yeah, thinking about things that we can do in those times to keep us moving forward and to just help us in those layers like, planning for doing what marketing can we do in that time can we design. Throw our energies into the field again, and do something a bit more creative and having, just utilizing those times, recognizing that they come, and utilizing those times, I think it's probably, there's lots of other cool niggles at the moment.

[00:23:52] Roz: We've lost probably half our crop to a rat, which was really frustrating, I think that, you just almost plan for that in, really. There's always going to be losses and frustrations like that in the future, so I think, just plan for them, and go 

[00:24:03] Roz Chandler: along that.

[00:24:03] Roz Chandler: Some little rodent is going to come, whether it's a squirrel, a rabbit, a deer. Exactly. Or some slug, when they start mating on Valentine's Day, start getting ready to come and eat all your day eaters. Oh, I know. Yeah, I think you do, but it's devastating when it

[00:24:16] Roz: happens. It is when we started on our our current site it was just grassland with a couple of dump water caverns that were done there so we had to clear it all first and in our first year there was very little biodiversity like the soil was very different very less or great soil And it's very free draining, very nutrient rich but there was no biodiversity.

[00:24:34] Roz: So our first year we're like, we don't really have a problem with slugs. We don't really lose so much. But obviously I'm now I suppose I should be thankful to say that the biodiversity is is increasing each year. We have the pests and the beneficiary of insects and pollinators and so on.

[00:24:51] Roz: But yeah, we have a lot more slugs now than we did 

[00:24:54] Roz Chandler: two years ago. I'm the mad one who goes around saving ladybirds, if I've cut something and it's got ladybird on it, I've got to save it back again. Yes, exactly. Madness. Miranda, how about you? What's been your highs and lows? 

[00:25:08] Miranda Michaelis: I think really my main high, I get two, two small highs that sort of make all the difference to me, but one is just even just watching a seed emerge from the soil that I still think it is.

[00:25:20] Miranda Michaelis: Absolutely astounding. And then just seeing it grow, that just gives me so much pressure. So that's a sort of mini high for me. And then when you get messages from people saying what joy you have given them through delivering them these rather beautiful flowers, I think It reminds me all the time of why I do it.

[00:25:38] Miranda Michaelis: But in terms of events and things like that, I suppose my first sort of big event for about 200 people doing all the flowers and cutting down silver bud trees to put in the marquee. It's a big creative sort of thing to do. I love love doing things like that. And I love, doing the, any events that I've done where, whether it be a dinner or a lunch and you just, somebody entrusts you to do whatever you think, and they, they've asked you because they seem to, I don't know, through word of mouth or just want to give you free reign to do what you think will be best in, in their space.

[00:26:16] Miranda Michaelis: And. I love that creative opportunity and it's. Lovely when it gives pleasure. It's just amazing. So yeah, The pleasure giving side of it's very important 

[00:26:26] Roz Chandler: to me. So as flower farmers, we all know that you need to be everything. You need to be a marketeer, social media whiz these days, absolutely.

[00:26:35] Roz Chandler: An accountant, a grower, and also a massive customer service guru. Besides all the creativity that goes into it, Roz, what do you think for you as a business is the most challenging part? I think it's 

[00:26:47] Roz: undoubtedly technology and I say that as someone who, I thought I was pretty good technologically I, I've never bashed away from working out and doing things on the computer quite confident.

[00:26:59] Roz: But it's getting things to work exactly how you want 'em to, and it's, I said it's having a really good website that works, that drives customers to your website. And it's integrating that with whatever self platform that can mix one mailing list. It's just getting to grips of all of that and making it work.

[00:27:15] Roz: It's quite time consuming, but I'd say there's really good stuff. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it is. I think I underestimated just how much time that would actually take, but that is always our winter job. Any sort of admin nibbles, like in redesigning a website, that happens every winter for us.

[00:27:28] Roz: And then I guess marketing, I thought we both find marketing quite a challenge. And that's something we always have to just really push ourselves forward and challenge ourselves to do better each time. I think that's probably 

[00:27:40] Roz Chandler: Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it, how every flower farmer has a different niggle.

[00:27:47] Roz Chandler: See, marketing hasn't been a marketing direct to marketing for me. It's not the issue. There are other issues. And it would be interesting if you, because you need to be so many things, that you need to be a bit of everything. And I suppose over the years I've learned if I'm really not good at something, then I need to find someone who is good at it.

[00:28:02] Roz Chandler: To help 

[00:28:03] Roz: me. Exactly. I would have said accounting was our big issue, but we got an accountant because of what that popped up. Yes. Slowly. Yeah, exactly. And we have sought out help in kind of the areas. And there's always more help and there's always more advice out there and stuff.

[00:28:17] Roz: It's really helpful to be aware, obviously, of your strengths and your weaknesses and I'd say when you put those weaknesses to identify where you can get the people who are doing it well and and approach them for help and try and learn from them in that way. 

[00:28:29] Roz Chandler: Oh, 100 percent yeah. Miranda, how about you?

[00:28:32] Roz Chandler: What do you find challenging? Is it social media? Is it cash flow and accounting? Is it custom service? Which areas do you think are the most challenging? 

[00:28:41] Miranda Michaelis: For me, it's definitely the marketing and technology. It's doesn't come naturally to me at all. I'm much more happy at the creative end of the business and and growing.

[00:28:52] Miranda Michaelis: And then the other thing is time. I also realize, I could get someone to help with the marketing or help with technology, but it takes time to find the right person. And it's that juggling between. I can do this myself. If I sit down and 

[00:29:06] Roz Chandler: concentrate for two hours, I can work out how to create a link 

[00:29:09] Miranda Michaelis: from my reel to my website, whatever.

[00:29:11] Miranda Michaelis: And you can, and I believe that, with focus, you can do anything yourself, but actually you're limited by time. And so juggling all these different elements is what I find really hard. I'm working out whether I should have a partner, which I would love in many ways. I would find hard also, because I'm a bit of a control freak.

[00:29:34] Miranda Michaelis: And but I love having the camaraderie as well. But then, for me at the moment, the profits aren't exactly enormous. So I just say, I don't know quite how that would work. 

[00:29:44] Roz Chandler: Yeah, I've done a number of different businesses in the past. One, I did have a business partner and it didn't work. And then when that doesn't work, it's really awful.

[00:29:52] Roz Chandler: And then more recently in my business, I'm working very heavily with a social media guru who we run an online growth club to help plough farmers grow their businesses. And it's a membership. And he and I are completely different yin and yang. He's half my age for a start. And. He brings very different knowledge to me and actually we've become really firm friends and it works because we've got this kind of side business and jointly it works really well and we can see where that's working first.

[00:30:22] Roz Chandler: And that was quite a challenge for me because, I look back historically and it didn't work. So going in with a partner is really difficult and hats Roz for doing it. And when it works, it's fantastic. Because you can bounce off each other and you can grow your businesses together. And I think that's lovely.

[00:30:39] Roz Chandler: And you've got different skills to bring to the table, which is also lovely. One of the reasons I've now got 151, 000, I think at last count Instagram followers is because I'm working with someone who's helping me. So it isn't all me. And so it's a lot of finding someone who's got different talents to you to bring to the table.

[00:30:57] Miranda Michaelis: And how do you work with him? Do you see him and do it face to face each week, each day? 

[00:31:03] Roz Chandler: It's interesting because we're right, we're really close now. We're really good friends and he will come and stay one day, one day a week at my house. And we have dinner and we have a laugh and we run things together.

[00:31:13] Roz Chandler: He doesn't live that far away, maybe an hour away. And that works really well. But initially, it didn't start off like that, of course. It started where we would do some filming on one day a month, and then we would work out the strategy for the month and what meals look like. And then laterally, it became let's run this growth club online together and do a membership and help other flower farmers to grow their businesses, because his skills are very different to my business skills.

[00:31:36] Roz Chandler: And so that works really well. And so that's how it works really. It evolved, it started off as a very business relationship, which I suppose puts the ground rules in, doesn't it? Saying this is a business relationship, this is what I want, this is what I want you to do, and I'll pay you x, and has transformed into something very different that neither of us thought it would.

[00:31:56] Roz Chandler: But now 

[00:31:56] Miranda Michaelis: you're collaborative. We 

[00:31:58] Roz Chandler: are, yeah, really collaborative in a massive 

[00:32:01] Miranda Michaelis: way. And how did you find him? 

[00:32:04] Roz Chandler: Through a joint friend in horticulture. So it wasn't, was it flower? Yeah, a little bit of flower farming, but through a joint friend, I could see what he was doing for them and thought, oh, that's really great.

[00:32:17] Roz Chandler: And then when he left his corporate role, I thought I need a bit of that. And contacted him and said, would you come do some of that for me? And that's how that happened. Because at that point I had, I don't know, 25, 000 followers, 25, 000 followers on Instagram. And we could work a plan out to have him more, but neither of us, if we look back now, would have expected it to be what it is today at all.

[00:32:39] Roz Chandler: And we treat it a little bit like a game and we don't get too obsessed with it, but we do have lots of fun with it. And that's how it evolved. It was never meant to be that in the 

[00:32:47] Miranda Michaelis: beginning. But your Instagram followers, they're all over the world. I suppose if you do online things, then that's worth it.

[00:32:55] Miranda Michaelis: If you're selling something like I am or doing courses. Actually, I only really, I'm interested in people who are local. Yes, of course you are. 

[00:33:06] Roz Chandler: There's ways of doing that, Miranda. There's ways of, obviously, tagging all your posts with the location of where you are, because that's obviously the local market you want.

[00:33:14] Roz Chandler: I want three different markets. I want a local market. I want a national market, because I want to sell my day and my tulip And I also want to do courses nationally, but I also want an international market because I sell an awful lot online and it can be global. So I noticed that my course members come from everywhere in the world now.

[00:33:35] Roz Chandler: I'm doing a course at the moment that comes from New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Greece, and so on. So I do want all three audiences because if I'm doing weddings, they need to be local. And funerals, it needs to be local. And if I'm doing national courses, it needs to be national. So I've gone after three different audiences and I know by my followers who they all are, if that makes sense.

[00:33:55] Roz Chandler: So you just target the ones you want. Yeah. Yes. 

[00:34:00] Miranda Michaelis: I'll 

[00:34:00] Roz Chandler: get there. Oh no, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. And you don't know which route, you don't know which path is going to take you there. Honestly. If you'd asked me a year ago, it's almost about being open to the opportunity, isn't it? I wouldn't have expected I'd be where I am today.

[00:34:14] Roz Chandler: Yeah, 

[00:34:15] Miranda Michaelis: no, you help a lot of people. It's fabulous what you do. 

[00:34:18] Roz Chandler: But that's what I love doing. That's my passion is to help other people. If that makes it, I think I should have been a teacher. Actually, I 

[00:34:26] Miranda Michaelis: have to say, Roz, because I am a member of your Best Bunch club. And what is incredibly nice, a bit of a shout out for it, but I really believe it is when you can ask any question and you'll get an honest answer, whereas, and an answer that's useful.

[00:34:40] Miranda Michaelis: So all this, there's a lot of pricing issues in. Yes. And the best bunch you will actually give someone a prize or tell them where the buzz comes from. Whereas quite a lot of people say it's all about time. It's taking you to grow and and how much the bulbs were and doing the whole calculation, which on the spur of the moment, you haven't always got time.

[00:34:59] Miranda Michaelis: I understand retRozpectively, and in the following winter you can work it out, but sometimes it is hard to do quickly, and you're very good at sharing very openly. 

[00:35:09] Roz Chandler: Thank you for that. It's really weird. You never quite often see what you give someone, do you? And I was doing some one to one mentoring this week with Flower Farmer, who's just starting really.

[00:35:17] Roz Chandler: And she started with a business plan and we've looked at it and I went, Oh, and we've doubled it now. And that's brilliant. And she has, she's really grown in confidence and really aspirational now. And we've found a niche that she's going to be absolutely perfect in. And she said to me, and then yesterday we just talked and I said, Oh, and I must, oh, what you need to know is look at wholesalers and you need to know what the price of a wholesale flower is.

[00:35:36] Roz Chandler: How will I do that? Oh, here's my logging. Go and have a look look. Oh, what about another? And she says, you're just so giving, but that's the bit of love. I really love that. And I think once you've found your passion. And you know as well, having joined the Vespunch, that I don't, that I'm there all the time.

[00:35:49] Roz Chandler: That's not a good thing, is it? Seven days a week, 24 7. But that's what I love doing. It's appreciated. Thank you. That's really sweet. Thank you. It's really honest of you, and I never get that feedback necessarily, and that makes my day. Honestly, it does. And by the way, I'm reading a book at the moment and I'll share it with you.

[00:36:06] Roz Chandler: It's called 4, 000 Weeks and it actually that's our life and which is really not enough. And when you work down that, that's only nought to 80. And actually if you're halfway through your life, which I am more than halfway through, that actually means I've only got about 1500 weeks left and that's really quite eyeopening.

[00:36:22] Roz Chandler: So what do you want to do with the next 1500 weeks and what do you want to be remembered for? And it would definitely be at providing education and inspiration, but it is quite frightening. I don't want to be depressive on this day, but it is quite frightening.

[00:36:36] Miranda Michaelis: I think it's a very good check to make sure you're doing what you want.

[00:36:40] Roz Chandler: 100 percent. So the two of you, as always, I could talk for England, and it's a real pleasure to have you both here, and I'd love to thank you for coming over today, both of you. I could talk to flower farmers every single day of the week, I can assure you of that, and Miranda, reach out to me if you want any advice on anything, and if you want to get your Instagram up, just let me know, I'm always willing to help.

[00:37:02] Roz Chandler: A photographer rang me this week, because he was having real problems, because he focused by a flaw in my weddings, and he was really depressed because he wasn't selling enough weddings. And he wanted to know how he could sell more. And I said, ring me, because to be honest, I felt really sorry for him. So that is never an issue.

[00:37:18] Roz Chandler: And now he feels much better, but it's just need someone to help every so often, and we just need to be kinder, I think. That's very generous. Thank you, Roz. Roz, as always, it's nice to meet another Roz, and I can't believe you spell your name R O Z, which is madness. I think I was about nine when I decided I wanted to be Roz with a Z, because I thought it was cool.

[00:37:38] Roz Chandler: But yeah, it's not really Roz with a Z, is it? It's R O S, but hey, we're both Rozes, which we must be the only ones in the United Kingdom, I reckon. 

[00:37:45] Roz: I don't think I've met another, 

[00:37:47] Roz Chandler: I shall never forget your name, that's for sure. So I will follow you both on Instagram. We will be putting in the show notes where you are, for people to contact you if they want to buy locally, that's absolutely fab. And I just want to thank you both for joining me today. 

[00:38:00] Miranda Michaelis: Thank you very much for 

[00:38:01] Roz Chandler: having us.

[00:38:02] Roz Chandler: Thank you. I think what we need to do now, Jo will probably jump back in.