The Cut Flower Podcast

Blooming Business: Starting Your Cut Flower Journey

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 147

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0:00 | 10:46

Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

Join our 3 Masterclasses at 8pm on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th January at 8pm UK time by clicking here

In this episode of the Cut Flower Podcast, Roz discusses the journey of starting a cut flower business, emphasizing the importance of understanding one's motivations and the potential for success in this field. She addresses common misconceptions about flower farming, the significance of planning and strategy, and the challenges faced by new flower farmers, including imposter syndrome. Rosalind encourages listeners to explore their passion for flowers and consider joining her upcoming master classes for further guidance.


Takeaways

  • January is a crucial month for cut flower farmers.
  • Starting a flower business can be a serious and fulfilling endeavor.
  • Understanding your financial needs is essential for sustainability.
  • Flowers are in demand for their local, seasonal, and sustainable qualities.
  • Identifying your 'why' is key to success in flower farming.
  • You don't need a large space to start a flower business.
  • Imposter syndrome is common among new flower farmers.
  • Community and education can significantly impact success.
  • Transitioning into flower farming should be methodical and intentional.


Rosalind Chandler (00:00)
So welcome back to the cut flower podcast. If you're a regular listener or if you're a new listener, then welcome to you. I'm Roz Chandler from Fieldgate Flowers and I am a cut flower farmer and trainer and have been growing cut flowers for the last 15 years. January is a really important month for us and we do a mini series of little short podcasts just to get you in the mood for growing cut flowers. We also run online three

free master classes which we're running on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th of January at 8 o'clock in the evening and that's UK time. We invite a global audience to join us online in a Facebook group.

and last year we had six and a half thousand people join us. So I hope that you will too. The link to join us or to register is in the show notes. If you can't find it, then just DM me on Instagram or on Facebook at Fieldgate Flowers or send me an email at roz.fieldgateflowers.co.uk and I will come back to you with the registration link. So hopefully you will be joining us within our Cut Flower Festival for the whole of January where there's loads of resources.

loads of PDFs, we'll keep you up to date with the lives, we'll be answering all your questions and we look forward to helping you grow more cut flowers in 2026. So we've talked about in this little mini series you've talked about growing your own wedding flowers or event flowers, we've talked about top tips for growing flowers if you're a beginner,

We've talked about work, physical and mental health well-being, one of the reasons you would grow cut flowers. And today we're going to be talking about starting a cut flower business or a side hustle or thinking about career transitioning. It's something that I come across all the time. And what tends to happen is lots of people don't know that's what's going to happen. They might start growing cut flowers, love it, enjoy it, and then find a way of either doing it as a side hustle. I don't really like that word side hustle because that's

sort of infers that it's not serious but it is. So if anyone's got a better word, the side hustle, that would be great. But side hustle for now, or career transitioning, they might be in a corporate career or in a career and they just want to move and transition gently to see with them this is something they actually want to pursue. And there's lots of different ways of doing this. And I just want to talk you through them. So lots of questions I get asked are, could I actually make money from growing flowers and how

much money. Every year I run some cohorts of a course called Blooming Business and in that we talk all the ways all the things about business in flowers we talk about you know we're going to weddings or funerals and proposals we talk about costings and websites we talk about pricing we talk about

AI, talk about diversification of incomes, we talk about writing books and doing podcasts, all sorts of things that you know, running a flower farm or being a flower farmer, you can be any number of things. So it's, you know, maybe for you, you've been thinking about it for years, it's been a quiet thought in the back of your mind, or maybe life is just nudged into rethinking how you could work and earn and live. This episode today is about starting a cut flower business.

or a side hustle, realistically, sustainably in a way that supports your life and doesn't consume it. One of the biggest myths around flower farming is has to be a big, risky and all-consuming thing to do. It doesn't. Some of the most successful flower growers I know started with a few beds, sold a few bunches locally, grew slowly, intentionally and sustainably. And a side hustle is not thinking small, it's about thinking wisely. ⁓

career let's say and for argument's sake because my maths isn't very good you earn a hundred thousand pound a year in that job then each day of that job is worth twenty thousand

So if you want to keep the same income and you're going to ask to reduce down to four days a week, my question firstly would be where are you going to make the 20,000 that you're giving up in order to be able to do four days a week and so on and so on. So think very sensibly about what, you know, if I had to give you a number, what number do you need to run your life? What profit, what income do you need to run your life that will not cause you overwhelm?

that you will be able to reinvest in the business that won't give you sleepless nights. What does that number look like and how realistic is it?

So why flowers make sense right now? Flowers offer something people are actively seeking now. They're local, they're seasonal, they're sustainable, they're meaningful. So whether it's bouquets, weddings, farewell flowers, which we absolutely love doing here at Fieldgate, subscription buckets or subscription bouquets, workshops, or any number of different ways. It could be dried flowers, it could be a foliage farm, you could be purely one plant like a dahliya. There's space for us all, but only if you grow and sell within

intention only if you have a plan and you write it down and you have a strategy for what you're actually going to do. Before you grow a single stem, I would ask you to ask yourselves, do I want extra income? Do I want more flexibility in my life? Do I want resilience if life changes? Do I want creative fulfillment? What is your why? There is a fantastic book by Simon Sinek.

called the why. I recommend it to anybody who's thinking about going into changing career or changing doing something different. know, what is your why? And that's really important. And once you've worked that out, that helps you going forward.

Your answers shape everything, what you grow, who you sell to, how much you work and what success looks like for you. And it's different for everybody. I've been working with many, many hundreds of people who are transitioning into flower farm or they're flower farmers and they're not making the profits they thought they would. I love working with people to see, to fulfil their objectives. I'm currently working with two flower farmers on a one-to-one basis, normally in

year I work with five so three spots for that but that's another session but ⁓ in those sessions we talk about the strategy, we talk about their why, we look at their growing plans, all of this is vital to thinking about transitioning.

So first of all, keep it simple. That would be my number one advice. You do not need a huge field. You don't need acres and acres of land. You don't need fancy branding or even don't need to grow every variety under the sun. You need reliable flowers, clear pricing and a confidence in your value. That's the biggest thing. Learn your crops, know your costs and sell with honesty and integrity. The foundation is what creates long term

sustainability. Most people don't fail because they can't grow flowers. They're really, really good at flowers. They struggle because they under price very commonly. They overwork seven days a week. They don't trust their experience or they don't feel supported. This is where guidance, community and education change everything. It's very, very common. I've been working with flower farmers, gosh, many, many years now. And imposter syndrome is the biggest thing we come across and that is

would I, should I, what if and that's really common for people who are transitioning careers into something that's unknown. mean you don't know at this stage if it's right for you which is why I would think ⁓ transitioning in a very very methodical way is the best thing.

So if this episode does spark something in you, even just a maybe, I'd love you to join us on the master classes I talked about earlier on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th. And we'll be talking about growing with intention, making flowers financially viable and building something resilient that fits your life. Registration is in the show notes, as I said before, and you can always come back to me if you can't find them.

Flowers don't just grow in the ground, they grow confidence, resilience and the possibilities of future. It now feels like the right time to explore that, just trust it. Thank you for listening and I hope to see you in the MasterClasses. Come and ask all your questions. I'll see you there.