The Cut Flower Podcast

Starting your own cut flower garden

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 144

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In this episode of the Cut Flower Podcast, Roz Chandler shares her journey as a flower farmer and offers valuable insights for beginners looking to start their own cut flower gardens. She emphasizes the importance of starting small, choosing the right flowers, and overcoming the fear of failure. With practical tips and encouragement, Roz aims to inspire listeners to embrace the joy of growing cut flowers and participate in her upcoming master classes.


Takeaways


  • Starting a cut flower garden is accessible to everyone.
  • You don't need a horticultural background to grow flowers.
  • Begin with a few easy-to-grow flower varieties.
  • Regular cutting encourages more blooms.
  • Fear of failure often holds people back from gardening.
  • Learning is a continuous process in gardening.
  • Choose flowers that germinate easily and bloom for a long time.
  • Sunlight and well-drained soil are essential for growth.
  • Cut flowers are meant to be harvested and enjoyed.
  • Join the online masterclasses for guidance and support.


Roz Chandler (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Cut Flower Podcast and if you're new I'm Roz Chandler I'm a flower farmer, a mentor and trainer and I've been growing cut flowers for over 15 years based in the UK just outside Milton Keynes so welcome to all new listeners and those who have returned so in January every year what we try and do is a little mini series just to get you going for the cut flower season ahead

And we also run some free online master classes. We run three of them, all different, on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th of January at eight o'clock in the evening UK time. And last year we had over six and a half thousand people join us in the Facebook group.

And that was amazing. And there's a great amount of collaboration going on. We answer all your Q &A's, there's lots of resources. We put an ebook in there. It's a really, really, it's a pop-up Facebook group full of information. So the first in this series was creating your own wedding flowers. So if you're dreaming of having your own wedding flowers, do join us on these master classes. So today we're going to be talking about starting a cut flower garden and my top tips for beginners.

Mostly I hear this sentence. I'd love to grow cut flowers, but I don't know where to start. And I just want to tell you that, and want to be completely honest, that when I started over 15 years ago, I had no idea. I had never grown a flower before. I didn't come from a horticultural background. My parents weren't great gardeners. I didn't have the luxury of growing up in a horticultural world. I grew up in a new town, in a new house that had red roses at the front and had a garden at the back,

small garden but it was a horticulture didn't feature largely in my life as I was growing up and so when I started when we moved to this new derelict property with my builder husband in 2006

we decided, I decided that the land needed to work for itself really. You shouldn't really have land that's just left empty. And before that it had cows in it. So I went on a half day course on having your own cut flowers. And I didn't even know what cut flowers were and why were they different to flowers and so on. And what's this about conditioning them properly and cutting them? I mean, there was so much to learn and obviously over 15 years and as a now successful flower farmer, we're growing over five acres. I've learned a lot.

January is all about encouraging and inspiring people to have their own cut flowers. So in January on these free master classes that we run on the, I'll say it again, on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th of January, eight o'clock in the evening, they're all different and each one is aimed at a different area of cut flowers. And we want to impart our knowledge. And last year, as I say, six and a half thousand people came.

and we hope we will beat that this year. So let's give some top tips. So I'd love to grow flowers, but I don't know where to start. So maybe you've got a garden, maybe you've got a few pots, or maybe you're staring at seed packets wondering on earth how people make this look so easy. Have you been scrolling on social media and seen other people show you how easy it is? Well, you're in the right place, because if I can do it, anyone can do it.

Because today I'm sharing my top tips starting a cut flower garden without overwhelm, without perfection and without feeling like you need to know everything upfront. You will learn as you go along and you will carry on learning. Gardening and cut flowers is one of those things that you never stop learning. We're still learning 15 years later.

You don't need to be an expert. All right, let me say this really, really first and really clearly. You do not need to be good at gardening to grow cut flowers. Most cut flowers want to grow. Of course, the seed wants to grow. They're generous, they're resilient and they're surprisingly forgiving. What you need is a little light, usually six hours a day, some soil and the confidence to give it a go. And everything else comes with practice.

Start small. One of the biggest mistakes I see is people trying to grow too much too soon. They buy lots and lots of different seeds and they grow them all at the same time and actually in any one packet there's too many seeds generally for you to want to grow.

Instead, perhaps choose five to seven flower varieties, learn how they behave and notice what works best in your space. A small successful patch will teach you far more than a big stressful one. You can always grow more next season and I can assure you, will. I don't know if any of you have read my book, which is available on Amazon called Seed to Vase and we run a course every year as well called Seed to Vase and it will be the sixth year we'll be running it this year, we're beginning at the end of January. And in that book,

Seed to Vase is the stories of people who came on that Seed to Vase course with very little knowledge of growing cut flowers and where their journey took them. And it's just inspirational. just find some of them, you you read them and think they came from no knowledge and this is what they learned on the course and this is what they then went on to do in lots and lots of different ways. So whether that's you're growing flowers for weddings or events, whether you're doing it to just put bouquets together for neighbours and provide joy in your community.

whether you're doing it because you actually want to do it as a side hustle, want to career transition into flower farming or whatever reason you want to grow cut flowers for, you're in the right place. So if you're just starting out you want flowers that germinate easy, flower over long period and bounce back after cutting.

So some brilliant beginner flowers include cosmos, all the varieties of cosmos, zinnias, sweet peas, calendula, cornflowers, nigellas and sunflowers. These flowers reward you quickly, which builds confidence and confidence keeps you growing.

Sun, soil and simplicity. You don't need a perfect soil, you don't need expensive equipment. What does matter is as much sun as you can manage. Reasonably well-drained soil. you've got clay there are ways around it but reasonably well-drained soil. And regular cutting. This actually encourages more flowers. If you think of sweet peas, the more you actually cut them the more you're going to get.

If your soil isn't great, there's a way of adding compost. If you don't have beds, you can use pots. And if you don't have space, you can grow vertically. They're always a way.

The power of cutting flowers. Here's something many beginners don't realise. The more you cut, the more you get. Cut flowers are designed to be harvests, so don't save them for best. Now of course there are some cut flowers where there's one stem, one flower, but there are a lot of cut flowers where actually once cut will come again. They're called cut and come again. And on our Masterclasses we'll be learning the difference between them. So don't save them for best. Bring them inside, share them, enjoy them. That's how plants learn to keep producing and how you'll fall in

love with growing. What holds most people back? Honestly, it's not lack of space, it's not lack of money, it's the fear of getting it wrong. But every grower you admire started exactly where you are now with questions, uncertainty and a pack of seeds. And as I said, I really was that person.

So if you're listening and thinking I want to do this properly but I want guidance that's exactly why I'm running free online master classes inside our Facebook group that's happening on the 22nd and 23rd and the 26th of January and we'll cover what to grow, when to grow and how to make flowers work for your life not the other way around. Registration for this is in the show notes if you can't find that then just DM me on Instagram or Facebook at Fieldgate Flowers or send me an email

So starting a cut flower garden doesn't change your life overnight but it does quietly steadily change how you see the world for sure and once you start it's extremely difficult to stop. Thanks for listening and I'll see you inside the master classes.