The Cut Flower Podcast

Grace Alexander's Floral Journey

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 148

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 59:28

Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

In this episode of the Cut Flower Podcast, host Roz Chandler speaks with Grace Alexander, a gardener and seed producer. Grace shares her journey from a childhood surrounded by gardens to her career in psychology and her passion for flower growing and seed production. The conversation explores the importance of adaptability in careers, the challenges of navigating money and worth in entrepreneurship, and the significance of finding balance and setting boundaries in life. Grace also discusses her plans for organic certification and her love for growing sweet peas, emphasizing the joy and fulfillment that comes from working with nature.

takeaways

  • Grace's early memories of gardening shaped her passion for flowers.
  • Joing together psychology and flower farming was a significant life change for Grace.
  • The importance of adaptability in careers is crucial for success.
  • Finding balance and setting boundaries is essential for personal well-being.
  • Sweet peas are a favorite flower for both Grace and Roz.
  • Organic certification for Grace's flower farm.
  • Grace's journey highlights the value of community in the gardening world.
  • The conversation underscores the importance of pursuing one's passions.
  • Grace believes that every experience contributes to personal growth.

You can view Grace's website here and follow her on Instagram here

First Tunnels, leaders in domestic and commercial product tunnels. 


Rosalind Chandler (00:00)
So hello and welcome back to the Cut Flower Podcast. I'm Roz and today I'm really delighted to be joined by Grace Alexander, gardener, writer, seed sower and creator of a wonderfully thoughtful world of flowers, slow living and floriscapism.

Grace lives on a cottage flower farm in Somerset, grows beautiful blooms and seeds and writes about seasonal life and is launching her seeds as certified organic from 2026 so we can talk more about that. And Grace and I were having a chat off air just that we could have talked all day actually and we have lots and lots of similarities. So I'm really, really excited to talk to Grace today. So Grace, thank you so much for being here. Your world with flowers, dogs, same as me. Tea, absolutely. Seasons, definitely. Thatched house, definitely. Feels like a breath of

Grace (00:41)
Ha ha ha

Rosalind Chandler (00:47)
share for many of our listeners. So tell us about how flowers first became such a defining part of your life. What's your earliest memories of gardening? Where did it all begin? Why did you even do this?

Grace (00:57)
Oh, where's, oh gosh, okay.

One of the earliest photographs of me is standing next to a pot and I think I'm eating soil. Which I must have been about three, I think. I feel like probably I'm with that generation that my parents would, you at the weekends you go around a garden or you go to a National Trust property. lots of, I was born in London actually, I was born in.

Rosalind Chandler (01:09)
God, right.

Grace (01:26)
St George's in Tooting in South London. Yeah, my father is a doctor, is a doctor psychiatrist and my mum was a nurse and yes, I know. And so Wisley actually featured incredibly strongly in my childhood. We did leave London when I was three, but we went back frequently to, know, because we have a lot of family in that area and lots of my parents, friends and things like that. So I do feel like I probably spent a lot of my formative years either at

Rosalind Chandler (01:28)
⁓ know it well.

⁓ well, yeah.

Grace (01:56)
Whistly sitting on Big Lions or in places like Dunham Massey and Tatton Park because I grew up in the North West, the rest of my childhood. So I just felt like it's really interesting when, you know, culture is the water you swim in. You don't always know it is what it is until someone comes at you differently. And then I think, surely everybody did that. I often, know, it's privilege that's invisible, isn't it? But and also, you know, if we ever went anyone around anyone's house for

Rosalind Chandler (02:11)
at the time. Yeah.

Nope.

Grace (02:24)
lunch or anything like that, there would always be the conversation of where do we go to go around the garden and that was just sort of gardens were sort of stitched in and then when I got to sixth form I went to a school in Warwickshire, we moved around quite a lot for my father's job and it's got a city school but you know a very lovely school and we had a sixth form centre built and they were talking about landscaping the garden and I said well I can do that.

Rosalind Chandler (02:39)
Yeah.

Grace (02:50)
It never occurred to me with the absolute arrogance of youth. Absolute. don't, looking back now, I think what on earth was I thinking? But I just did because I'd just grown up around it and that was such a part of what I knew. Looking back, I'm not sure how much I did know, but the garden was lovely and it was sort of fine. And then I think like lots of people, I sort of, just, it was put to one side for traveling. And then I worked in London for 10 years.

my training as a psychologist, worked in very urban areas, working in youth antisocial behaviour and things like that. And then I thought, well, I finished my training, I finished my first job and I need to go home. But home is not a place. Home is the countryside. Home is... I was a young farmer growing up, although I was born in Tooting. That is not really... I'm not a...

Rosalind Chandler (03:35)
Yeah.

Grace (03:44)
I'm briefly a city person for weekends and the odd day, but actually that's not who I am. I am very much a rural person. home was to leave London and to find somewhere else. And because we've moved around a lot, I don't really have a geographical area that's home. So at the time, my brother was in the Navy, he's very recently left after very many years, Submariner. And he was in Plymouth.

Rosalind Chandler (04:12)
as well, it's

college.

Grace (04:14)
⁓ there you go. There

you go. So he lives in Plymouth and St. Morris. And I had been introduced to my brother's best friend, also a submariner, had a slightly reckless and disreputable younger brother who had dropped out of med school to go and have a career in the Royal Marines. And my brother told me about this man and I was just like, that is the man I'm going to marry. That is the man I'm going to marry.

Rosalind Chandler (04:39)
⁓ wow! That was it!

Grace (04:42)
So after two years of hinting and you know, my brother flat refused to introduce us because he saw the look in my eye. Eventually I managed to meet him. There's a whole other story there. But anyway, I did. We had a date and I was like, excellent, lovely. So he was also living in Plymouth, in fact, with his brother. So we had sort of a cluster of people in Plymouth, very close to both of my sister-in-laws now.

And so I thought, well, I'll go to the Southwest then. I shall, you know, I shall start looking for a job as a fully qualified psychologist. I'll head down the M5. Because I didn't know anything about anything, I thought you could commute from Plymouth to Taunton. So I actually got a job in Taunton. You can't. I drove for my job interview for the job in Taunton. I realized you cannot do this every day. So ⁓ I gravitated to the area because of family and love, but...

Rosalind Chandler (05:15)
Head down there and five, yeah?

Grace (05:37)
I got the job that I got because their website was lovely and they had a picture of a cast iron footed bath on ⁓ their website. So I decided, well, that's the family assessment center I want to go to. Anywhere that's sort of psychologically related with nice sanitary wear in their bathrooms. That's definitely a place for me. And that was 17 years ago. This is my... Yeah, clearly a good vintage for Thatch Cottages.

Rosalind Chandler (05:57)
Wow, it's about the same time we bought this house actually.

Yeah.

Grace (06:05)
Yeah, so I ended up with sort of some baggage of psychological training, gardening culture that sort of stitched very deep into my psyche and into my soul and a husband. I'm not sure if that even answered the question. I don't know, I've lost track of what the question was now. Going back to the country, yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (06:22)
So you've gone back to the country, so you've got some land, so you started

gardening more, was that part of the plan? Did you just say, right, okay?

Grace (06:31)
Well, when I arrived here, so when I first moved down, I rented a place which was right up in the black down hills, which you'll know very well if you come from the sort of the back road from Exeter into Taunton, there's an absolutely stunning landscape. And I rented an incredibly cold, almost unfit for human habitation annex on the side of a farmhouse, because it was the cheapest rent I could find, which makes it sound a little bit emboborish, it was fine, but anyway.

Rosalind Chandler (06:39)
Yeah.

Grace (06:58)
and sort of managed to live there for six months until we had, in sort of 20, end of 2010, I think, we had some really bad snow and it's so remote. I got completely snowed out for, I think, the best part of two weeks. And I did have to commute from Plymouth. I had to go home to my now husband, then boyfriend's house in Plymouth and commute to Taunton because I couldn't get into my own house. But if you drive from that area into Taunton, you come down quite a main road. It's the main honiton.

linking road from Taunton. It's a very wiggly road and you come through a village and in the village are some utterly stunning thatched cottages. So on my commute to work I would you know I would see these thatched cottages and I would think my gosh aren't they gorgeous and just after the being snowed out incident I was driving down and a to let sign had appeared outside one of them and I know for a fact because of the way the emergency services work there are certain roads which get

allocated gritters and the linking road from Taunton to Honiton is allocated pretty much its own gritter because it's one of those roads that goes through I'm sure I don't really know but like hospitals and things like that so the road that goes through Corfe my village is never impassable ever so I was like right this is the solution is I'm always gonna be able to get to work I'm always gonna be able to get out of my house I'm going to ring them up and say can I rent your house and also I had a dog by that point so I was like can I bring my dog

And they said, yeah, absolutely. So for the first 18 months, it was a rented property. So actually I didn't do a lot of gardening. I didn't get into the sort of, is this a, you know, something I want to maintain? I just sort of, I was working incredibly hard at the time as well. So I mowed the lawn and you know, did some, did some very basic stuff, which I sort of considered to be the baseline for the amount of gardening that most people do, but probably that's a mistake as well, probably. That's not quite true. I live in a very skewed world.

⁓ And then I just realised that this was my life's dream and I just, I didn't ever want to leave. So I got in touch with the guy who I rented it from, who I won't say his name, but he is quite well known in the area that he'd actually bought this cottage as a way of hiding money from his ex-wife in the divorce. So when I advised him around and said, is there any chance you would think of it? He said, yeah, that's all finished now, obviously I don't need it anymore sort of thing. ⁓

So I bought it and actually what I hadn't even really factored in to when I bought it is I'm sitting in my study now and I look out over the back so away from the sort of the main village and there's a beautiful hill in front of me and there's all of the cottages there they were split into three and all of them have quite a long back garden and then there's a sort of an area for car parking and there was a bit of land that was taken out of a field and fenced off.

Rosalind Chandler (09:24)
I've done a bit, yeah.

Grace (09:51)
And it was some, this is going back quite a long time, but was something about wanting to screen some visibility. So they fenced off a bit and they filled it with field maples to screen something from this, but not very clear what happened. But then someone put some goats in there and the goats ate all the trees. So it just became that there was a field with a bit fenced off, but that fenced off bit, which is, it's about 25 meters by 30 meters.

If you work in acres, almost doesn't. When I rang up the soil associations that I wanted to be organic certified, I said, is there a lower limit? And they very politely said, no, no, that's fine. What are we talking? And I said, well, it's a, it's under a quarter of an acre. You can grow a lot on a quarter of an acre. So in the buying of the property,

Rosalind Chandler (10:33)
but you can grow a lot on a quarter of an acre.

Grace (10:39)
they suddenly said, by the way, you know this comes with your house, don't you? So there's one, two and three and it just happens to belong to number two and I was buying number two. So I said, Christ, okay. ⁓ How am gonna mow that? And we got some sheep for a bit and we did some other things for a bit. And then there was this sort of critical moment that up until that point, everything had been about my career, everything about my job. I love my job. I work in child protection. I essentially, I risk assess.

dangerous people who have chosen to be around children and that might be mothers, might be fathers, might be step parents, might be all sorts of things. And just, it's absolutely my life's work. It's the reason I'm put on the earth and all of those things. But we had a bit of an issue where we employed somebody who we thought was going to really support our service and grow our service. And it turned out not to be the case. And essentially she...

Psychologists bring up lots of strong feelings in people and I brought up some particularly negative feelings in her and she could not tolerate me at all being around. I went from 100 % full on, flat out, no work life boundaries at all, I just lived and breathed my job to sat in this beautiful cottage that I just bought thinking, Christ.

What has just happened? The thing that I had given my soul to turned out that was quite a conditional trade and I'm very vulnerable because I don't own that. There's nothing that can protect me because I have given everything and I had no, I I thought like we would, again, I think it's a sort of generational thing. It's probably quite different now, but.

Rosalind Chandler (12:15)
Yeah, it's conditional. You're right, it's conditional.

Grace (12:30)
You think if you work hard you will be rewarded, you think there's justice in the trade of employment and in lots of cases there are and actually I'm very lucky that it's all sort of come round again, not spoiler alert, don't want to give away the happy ending but it's all sort of fine again but it did, it made me think.

I just...

It was life-changing. It was so hideous when it happened, but it forced me to reevaluate everything I thought I knew about my identity, but also the idea of when you are employed, you give yourself like that, you're out of control and it can go in a moment. so, going back to the sort of designing the sixth form.

Rosalind Chandler (13:08)
Yeah, you're out of control. You are out of...

Grace (13:20)
garden and stuff, there's probably very deep down there was a bit of a maverick left, somewhere. I'm deeply conventional in lots of ways, but there was clearly something in there enough that I said, right, that's it. I'm going to set up a business. I'm going to set up. And I have unfortunately signed a contract that says that I can't do anything psychological related that's in competition with my business. So it had to be something completely different. So I said, right, that's it. I'm going to set up something called Core for Fruit and Flowers.

Rosalind Chandler (13:40)
massage, something completely different.

Grace (13:47)
and everyone laughed and thought this was hilarious. But I did. And I grew, I grew and I grew and I learned how to use a camera and I got Instagram and I invented this whole other person to do this thing. I mean, lots of things. I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. And part of that was I was.

Rosalind Chandler (14:02)
Yeah.

Grace (14:14)
right there when the the Great British Flowers wave started. Like yeah, yes I was. it's huge now, yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (14:18)
Yeah, yes, you were when the wave started. It's bigger now, I think. when the the wave started,

I found because I was there 15 years ago, but I was just doing it as a side thing. Same as you. It was just like, I was just seeing where it would take me. But then we were educating people about what British flowers were and why you should have them. That was a total education. Now it's not.

Grace (14:30)
Mm.

totally.

Mm.

Rosalind Chandler (14:41)
it's moved, the phasers moved to what you don't use pesticides and they're organically grown or whatever it happens to be and the wave is definitely now but it's taken while

Grace (14:50)
⁓

Yeah, but it was exciting. I feel like one of those people that says, you know, I was in London in the seventies, but you know, it was so exciting. It was exciting. I feel terribly old now, but you know, so Becca and Stuart, Becca Stuart and I, who was also, I mean,

Rosalind Chandler (15:01)
It was. Yeah, agreed.

Grace (15:06)
she was right, she was even further ahead than I was and she, yeah, we, we talk like elder elders of the world, but it was really exciting at the time and it just really took off and it was amazing. It was so amazing. I learned a lot like, like you, I'm sure in the first, first 18 months.

Rosalind Chandler (15:26)
Mm.

to.

Grace (15:31)
But Becca always talks about virgin soil though, like your first season charm, like you turn over new grounds and the first year is, I don't know it's a microbiome thing, I don't know what it is, but the first time you put some flowers in the ground, my God, it's amazing.

So yeah, so that was Grace Alexander Flowers that started and

then I went back to work, of course I did. The person who'd made my life a misery was, you know, sacked and everything returned somewhat to normal except that I then went back to working full-time but then I also had this incredible side hustle thing that was a full-time job too. So I...

Rosalind Chandler (16:06)
which was a full-time job too.

Grace (16:12)
Yeah, so I had to, just, didn't want to, I'm very much have my cake and eat it. I wasn't going to choose between the two things. And actually one of the things that I refused to give up was the community of people. But in the flowers world, the British flowers world and the flower grow world and the gardening world, there are so many lovely people. So many lovely people. And I could not turn my back on those relationships and those friendships and those.

Rosalind Chandler (16:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, great.

Grace (16:40)
That is what really kept me going, I think. I love other psychologists, some of them are even my friends, but I don't always go out to lunch with them. ⁓ whereas people in the flower world, like I can spend a lot of time with them and always be inspired and thrilled and nourished by that. So yeah, so that's sort of how I...

continued and then I just, found ways of making it work. So like, think everybody, the first thing is you sort of do a couple of weddings and I loved that. I had a lot of fun. had the best brides and it was just such a, ⁓ to be able to do that. But if you are doing weddings, you cut on Thursday morning, you arrange on Friday morning, you deliver on Saturday morning and you probably haven't slept that much in between.

Rosalind Chandler (17:12)
Yeah, great.

Yeah.

Grace (17:27)
And if I get a phone call saying I've got a baby with an injury or I've got this person's kicking off or you know, you need to come and do this thing. I'm like, can't, I cannot have that rigidity, my job. I cover a lot of safeguarding and you know, I'm, I was at time clinical director. I'm now the manager of my service. And you just can't say, God, I'm really sorry. I haven't done the buttonholes yet. I'm man on the Southern bridge. really sorry. So I, so the flowers became the seeds.

Rosalind Chandler (17:47)
Got a wedding, got a wedding at 10 o'clock today.

Grace (17:57)
because if you've ever cut flowers and needed them for a specific event, I'm talking a lot with Jonathan Shepherd at the moment, who's growing Cosmos of Chelsea and having, ⁓ my God, the flashbacks to you need these flowers on these day and you have to grow five times as much. he was saying, everyone thinks that the 75 plants that you have got for...

Rosalind Chandler (18:08)
Yes, I saw that.

Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah.

Grace (18:24)
you know, on your standard Chelsea, the 75 flowers you grew. said, I'm, growing 4,000 plants to make sure I have 75 that are in good nick. And I was like, yes. And that's, and that's sort of what it's like when you're, you're doing big workshops or, know, where you need a lot of flowers, but you know, my style is always going to be a bit oversized. So if I was doing a wedding, it was going to be like a big, like there were going to be some big earns going on.

Rosalind Chandler (18:28)
Yeah.

No.

Grace (18:49)
because that's what people wanted before and that's what I love and that's what makes me happy. It's never gonna be like a stem of anything and a bud jar would have been easier if it was. And so I just, thought, okay, I want something that I can fit in around. I need something really flexible. I need something that just sits there and waits for me if I get a phone call saying you've got to go. And I thought, my God, seeds. Like you grow them and you nurture them and you do it all in your own time.

Rosalind Chandler (19:11)
Yeah.

Grace (19:18)
and then they sit in your fridge and then people order them and then you sit watching Midsomer Murders, insert other ITV3 crime drama, very, you sit there packing them and sort of sellotaping your packets together and it's, you know, it's just you and a teaspoon and a cup of tea and ⁓ people buy them and you send them.

Rosalind Chandler (19:30)
Okay then.

Well, there's a demand

for British grown seeds, isn't there? That you've caught another wave which happened in the now. There's a theme and I think that's true. I think the wave and when we talked about it off camera about the floret seeds that came to the UK, was it last year or the year before? Last year.

Grace (19:46)
No, there's a theme here, Roz, there's a theme.

The her bred ones for

last year. Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (20:01)
which we're never

going to, we wouldn't get hold of and we can't get hold of again. It was definite. mean, the marketing as a marketeer sitting behind that was phenomenal. Phenomenal. It was, there's only so many, it's not going to happen again. They're this price, they do this and you've got to buy them now. And it was a massive frenzy because I run some online courses and everything and we all talk about it and then my membership, it was an online frenzy and we all bought into it.

Grace (20:06)
Yeah.

she's a genius. She is a genius. Yeah.

you

Rosalind Chandler (20:31)
We all definitely bought into it. So there's definitely something about buying seeds and having different varieties and having it and now having it in the UK and there aren't that many seeds grown by UK growers. aren't. Or are they labelled? I mean, where they come from. That's the other thing. It's a bit like flowers.

Grace (20:43)
Mmm. Mmm. ⁓

owe so much about traceability and about, yes, the ethics of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. But I mean,

Rosalind Chandler (21:01)
I can just see

you in your living room measuring out seeds. So you're growing for seed now primarily. Would you say you're a seed company? What else do you do?

Grace (21:10)
Primarily. Yes.

I

do regularly describe myself as a seed merchant. It's always rather hard to describe what I am. But yes, seed merchant is definitely in there, seed producer. I'm increasingly not talking about myself as a flower farmer, I have to say. That's been a definite shift for me because I do feel like I'm using the word gardener.

lot more. In the last year or so I've really noticed that I have I feel like I've shifted a bit in identity and I think that's probably because I spend a lot more of my time around gardeners now. So as part of being part of the garden collective I've been really lucky to form some really lovely relationships with people who are much more in the gardening world than the flower farming world and I know that probably sounds like it's a bit of a strange distinction but I think they are slightly different worlds.

Rosalind Chandler (21:54)
Yeah.

no, they are different worlds.

Grace (22:10)
Huge

overlap, but sight of different worlds. And I do know, you know, I think about some flower farmers who have been quite unhappy with people on quite a small scale who are doing gardening type things, calling themselves flower farmers. And I'm, you know, I'm all right with that. I'll own what I am. But I would probably describe myself now more as a gardener than a flower farmer, but growing full seed is what my...

the most of my ground is for. So I did have a massive wobble about a week ago because I've planted, think I'm up to a hundred different sorts of sweet peas and there are at least 15 plants of each one. Yes, I'm very excited that I'm working with the National Sweet Pea Collection to grow for RHS Badminton. I did check with them if I was allowed to say that they haven't said yes yet, but I would say you heard it first and I'll deny it if I.

Rosalind Chandler (22:51)
It's just about to say what are you growing? Right.

Yeah, we didn't say it.

Grace (23:09)
get told off. I'm told

not to talk about it. That's so exciting, but it does mean that I'm sort of like, right, okay, I need to put some aside for actual cutting for flowers, which I haven't had to do. Having just had this whole conversation with you about never grow for events, it's really stressful.

Rosalind Chandler (23:27)
He's

doing it again badminton.

Grace (23:29)
I'm doing it again. I don't learn, I don't learn. Shiny things, shiny things, I just get really excited and I say yes to everything. They did ask whether I could grow for Windsor as well, I was like, Christ, that's June, that's stressful.

Rosalind Chandler (23:34)
I know.

No,

I mean that'd have to under cover anyway, wouldn't it, really early.

Grace (23:44)
And I don't, I don't have undercover. I've got some

really, I had some precious green and gorgeous early flowering sunshine mix, which I was saving for a special occasion, but I did put them in yesterday thinking maybe they'll do something. But I don't, so I don't have poly tunnels. I don't, I have a greenhouse, like a really standard domestic greenhouse. And apart from that, I just have a lot of hope and have quite a sheltered spot. So yes, so I am.

I was starting to worry quite a lot about where I was going to put all these sweet peas. Most of the kitchen garden will have ATP in it, which I'll just plant chard around and tell my husband that that's, know, we're companion planting, it's fine. But yes, it's going to be a bit of a squeeze this year because I'm convinced that this is going to be a really good year for sweet peas. Last year was quite good actually, it wasn't a good year for Yeah, yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (24:15)
Yeah.

You can grow my fences, it's fine.

Yeah, last year was really good, really good because we grow them under cover like now they're already in and

we grow them outside or along Harris fencing because my husband's a building so he always got Harris fencing and they're too rindous.

Grace (24:42)
Yeah, my God, that's so funny.

My husband and I, we were in bed last night and I was thinking about trellises and I've got quite a lot of hazel which I was going to sort of try and borrow a chainsaw and cop it madly. And we both realised that we were both on different websites, both looking at concrete reinforcing metal grid for completely different reasons, but we were both looking, I think, yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (25:06)
Yeah, exactly. It's great stuff.

Grace (25:09)
I think he was on FH Blundell and I was on Bradford's or something like that and I just thought, my god. We are soulmates. We are absolutely soulmates.

Rosalind Chandler (25:14)
This is what you come to looking

at fencing at night.

Grace (25:21)
yes yeah i can't remember what he was going to do with his but yeah i don't think it was building me sweet pea supports he would but yeah

Rosalind Chandler (25:28)
No. My

husband will only get involved in the farm if it involves a machine because he likes the digger and he loves a bit of a rotavator or he likes, he's got JCB, he loves, if it involves a machine, pressure washer, big hose, big, yeah, he's fine. Anything else like, darling would you like to help me plant the tulips? No.

Grace (25:36)
Yes.

Yep. Yeah.

Oh

no, God no, no, no, no. I mean, I'm very lucky in that, you know, my husband's an ex-royal Marine. Like he's never happier than when he's digging a trench. So I can just point and say, I'd like a trench there, please. I'd like to, could you just dig up that post for me? But so he will do things that are non machinery related. Although if I mentioned mini diggers, he does look a bit misty and sort of dreamy and starts to, yeah, invest in the process a bit more. I'm very lucky. you know, my husband isn't a builder. He's now a doctor, but.

he is very buildery and probably in a different life he would have been a builder so the studio that's at end of my garden he built for me and is a thing of absolute beauty and is more solidly constructed than my house so and distinctly warmer because it's double glazed which my house isn't so

Rosalind Chandler (26:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I just think my husband stopped working and if he stopped working life would be better because I could get him to do more. But he's obviously working, he does lots of commercial stuff so it's like big Amazon buildings. it's not really kind of, I can see an Amazon building on my farm but not really. seeds, let's go back to seeds. Sweet peas you're gonna grow. How do you keep them true or do you not? Do you sell a selection of sweet peas? How do you keep them true to what they are?

Grace (26:52)
Mmm.

No,

sweet peas, feel, I don't, I almost don't want to say because if anyone knew how unbelievably simple it is to grow sweet peas for seed, I just feel like everybody would do it. So sweet peas self-pollinate. So when they come out, they, the pollen has already pollinated inside. it is already setting seed by the time it flowers.

Rosalind Chandler (27:24)
It is the easiest, I agree.

so it knows what it is.

Grace (27:38)
So there is,

yeah, so it's already true to seed. It means that you don't get the crossing. Like I love Nigella, I love cosmos. There are so many flowers that I would love to grow and sell the seed of, but I don't have the equipment to keep it true to seed, which means as soon as you get a bee in or you get, you know, the wind pollinates, nothing like that.

Rosalind Chandler (27:56)
so hard. You've got to be

covering it all. We've tried. It's keeping it in an isolated environment.

Grace (27:59)
Yeah, and I'm-

Yes. So, and I just, I don't have the infrastructure or the organisations to do that. So all of the seeds that I've sown, that I've produced and then sold on for seed have been things that will come true from seed. Like, you know, there are ways around it. So my Nigella is blue and white mix sort of thing, because there's, can't, can't. Cosmos, I don't even sell Cosmos because you just can't, you know.

Rosalind Chandler (28:20)
Yeah, yeah.

Grace (28:27)
So sweet peas are amazing because A, they self pollinate. So you know exactly what they've got. When I did a really amazing, I did the, I can't remember what the, I don't think this is a certificate, but the Gaia Foundation do an amazing seed saving course, which I did, which had different modules on seed production and ethics and politics of seed production, which was brilliant. And we did lots of farm visits. So I went to Vital Seeds and Trull Farm and various other places.

The biggest difficulty with sweet peas about keeping them true is because the vines intermingle a lot if you're not terribly careful. You know, you have to, you do have to, you know, keep your distances and make sure one, you know, one tendril doesn't just cross a teepee, it'll start going up the other one. You have to rogue out if you have any that you just think, Christ, that's not quite what I was expecting. And I do do that because...

Rosalind Chandler (29:01)
Which one is this one?

Sweet P-Mix,

Grace (29:19)
I know, god,

had a bag of Piggie Sue, which is my most exclusive variety and I had a bowl of Nimbus and I just tipped the bowl into the bag and I was like, ⁓ that's wrecked it. So, but actually I'll grow it on and then I'll just rogue it as I grow it and then hopefully I'll have got it back to Piggie Sue again. That was a low moment. So yes, no, the plants are fine. It's me that's the problem.

Rosalind Chandler (29:45)
So you're selling sweet peas, anything else? Nigella's, blue and white mix, what else?

Grace (29:49)
Well,

I go back and forth on this a lot and I'm a great believer in specialization and drilling down and really getting good at one thing. In my day job, I do child protection and that's it. I've had a bit of therapy but I'm not very good at it. Like I don't, I'm not a generalist, I'm a specialist. But then I think there's so many flowers I really like and it's really hard, so.

Rosalind Chandler (29:59)
Yeah.

I wouldn't be able to stop.

Grace (30:17)
really sorry.

No, so I, with the soil association, you have to sort of declare in advance what it is you're going to grow and what you're going to sell. And you have to make sure that you're sort of documented for everything. You can't just pick up a random rogue thing and say, oh no, I produce that now. And so I did, in order to not shut any doors, I did do my full list of all of the cut flowers. So I, you know, there's lots of things that,

you know, bronze fennel, I grow a lot of bronze fennel, you can't not grow a lot of bronze fennel. And so I have buckets of seed, echinops, buckets of seed at the end of the year. So I have put everything on the list, but ask me again in August when I'm doing the seed shop and loading up. Yeah. So, so every bit of seed that I've got at the moment is for me because my, so it's really interesting with the soil association organic certification, it's

The thing that you are certifying is your soil. So my soil, my ground, my garden and sort of my flower field will be organic from... my God, it's a week today. It's a week today. So it's the 28th of January. It's been a two year process, which has been, it's been, it's been fine. ⁓ There is always a bit of paperwork to do, but it is fine. There's lots of bits. There's a sentence that I genuinely don't understand. I have to Google it and try and ask someone to explain it me, but...

So the seed that I have at the moment is going to be my seed to go into my organic ground. Lots of it is already four generations old with me anyway. I have declared there's some extra varieties that I brought in. That will go into my organic ground from the beginning of next month or as soon as the ground's ready. And then it will grow on. then so the crop that I'm going to harvest in August this year, July, August, September, depending on the weather, is going to be the first.

specialist organic sweet pea crop in the UK.

Rosalind Chandler (32:17)
you

Grace (32:19)
Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (32:21)
Wow.

Grace (32:22)
Yeah, very exciting, very exciting.

Rosalind Chandler (32:25)
do love a sweet pea. You know, we have to grow long stemmed

and scented generally, because if we're selling to wholesale or, know, weddings or something, we'll sell, you know, we'll go Spencer variety, let's say, because it's long stemmed and it's scented. So we'll be quiet.

Grace (32:39)
Yeah, what's your

what's your favorite? Your death row desert island sweet pea.

Rosalind Chandler (32:48)
Aphrodite.

Plain, simple, looks good in a vase on its own. Doesn't try and pretend to be something it's not. ⁓

Grace (32:54)
Interesting.

interesting ⁓

I love it, a personality assessment of a sweet poof. Love it.

Rosalind Chandler (33:08)
You

Grace (33:12)
Yeah, authentically coherent in identity. Brilliant. Love it. Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (33:15)
Yeah, definitely, knows what it is.

We use a lot of it, so that kind of helps too.

Grace (33:21)
Hilariously, don't grow it. I'm now gonna write it on a list and I'm gonna order some today.

I am not, I...

Rosalind Chandler (33:30)
We've

never got enough, we? We've never got enough. So I'm thinking, should be growing. What should I be doing? ⁓

Grace (33:32)
No, no, no, no, no, I know, Yes, I mean, the

98 that I've already sewn are clearly not enough because you've just mentioned the one that I don't. Actually, I have got, I am at that stage of the season where I'm just like, oh God, have I just, have I overcommitted? So Millie Pruce has just sent me some extra of one that she grew last year that we both grew actually, we both really wanted and her.

Rosalind Chandler (33:48)
Yeah.

Grace (33:56)
seed came true for the variety that it's meant to be and mine didn't and I was like don't know why Millie's going on about this when it's disgusting and she was like ⁓ that's not what it's meant to look like I'll send you some so I've just planted a load of that.

Rosalind Chandler (34:06)
get your seeds and when will they know when they're available? Where can we go? ⁓

Grace (34:09)
So

the seed shop is currently on hold because I'm sowing everything but if you go on my website the header says it will be open on the 30th of August this year and so there will be ⁓ a small collection of the first exclusive harvest will be available through my shop so I do have

Rosalind Chandler (34:18)
Yeah.

Sign up for me.

Grace (34:35)
a really lovely Sunday night newsletter which is one of the loveliest newsletters in gardening and if you go on my website you can very easily sign up for that thank you, I do love it, you can sign up for that.

Rosalind Chandler (34:42)
Let's see what we have.

you're obviously really good at writing,

know, you're creative, you're writing and it's very beautiful. So it's very, and that's what the dream is, isn't it? So.

Grace (34:50)
It is very beautiful.

Yes, it is. I- there's an-

Rosalind Chandler (34:56)
What I think talking

to you today showed us, or showed the audience, is that you can do flowers in loads of ways. You know, I work with loads of people about transitioning out of their careers into flower farming generally. But it doesn't have to be flower farming. You know, you can grow foliage and send it to florists all across the UK. You can be a seed producer. You can do dried flowers. You can do workshops. You can do flowers for wholesale retail. You can do weddings. You can do funerals. It's not...

hopefully not all of it, because otherwise you'll burn yourself out. And you can run online, I do a lot online as you know. So there is loads that you can do, it isn't a one trip pony is it, it's just like don't wrap it all up and say that's what you do. So I think that's the important thing.

Grace (35:34)
Mmm.

No.

Absolutely. And also I would add to that, don't think that because you've set up in one way, that is the thing. So I think there's a lot of messaging, particularly for women, about being flaky and changing your mind and doing lots of, you you should commit and you should really stick it out. And I'm absolutely not here for that. I'm here for...

Rosalind Chandler (35:58)
Yeah.

Grace (36:17)
I don't ever see it that I did weddings and I failed at it and I did workshops and I failed at it. So I had to keep trying other things. I learned a huge amount from my weddings and I loved them. And then I said, but that doesn't suit me. So I'm going to do this and I'm going to apply everything I knew about that to this. And then I'm just going to keep, you know, I'm very much an early adopter. I'm very much like, I think very creatively about my business, about my life, about how, how I move, but I'm never afraid to burn something down and say,

Rosalind Chandler (36:23)
No.

Grace (36:47)
That phase is done now. I didn't fail at it. That absolutely was not a failure. That's what I did for that bit of time. And now this is what I'm doing next. you just, you build on every experience you have to the next one.

Rosalind Chandler (37:00)
100 percent.

Because they say don't they now that the people, know, the youngsters now in their 20s, I've got two children so I'm used to this, will have nine careers. Now we're not talking nine different jobs, we're talking nine careers. So maybe they qualified as a journalist and then decided they wanted to be a gardener and then maybe had an injury. So then they decided that actually what they really wanted to do was work for a charity. And then after that they were going to, and they're going to have nine different careers. Now I think I've

Grace (37:11)
Hmm.

Mm.

Hmm.

Rosalind Chandler (37:32)
had four different completely randomly different things that not even connected in any way shape or form I mean how you go from being an overseas rep to a flower farmer is not even connected in any way but some of the skills you obviously had were very people-orientated so don't be afraid to change it yeah if it's not working do something different

Grace (37:39)
Really.

Hmm.

Yeah, I think in that though, I find that really interesting. I...

As much as I say don't be afraid to burn things down and I don't, I've been a psychologist for a very long time now and I think...

I'm going to have to put aside some conventional stuff about not bigging oneself up because I feel I need to say some things, but I'm very good at it. Like I'm very good at it. But I think that's been because I'm, A, I'm wired for it. I don't know why. I don't know why, but I, I am, am, it's in my genes. It's in my trauma and I'm a super mentalizer and I've got a lot of, there are a lot of qualities to me that make me very good at But the other thing that makes me good at I've just been doing it a very long time.

Rosalind Chandler (38:30)
Yeah.

It's in your genes by the way.

Grace (38:47)
And I have sat in room with a lot of people and I've watched them a lot. I've just got patterns and algorithms and sort of I've just got a lot of experience. But when I was 18, I was just leaving sixth form college and someone said to me,

my English language teacher, I'll never forget it, she just looked me in the eye and she said, I was going off to get my A-level results, and she said, whatever you do, you will do it well. And that's partly because I don't try things I'm not going to be very good at, so I'm not saying I'm good at everything, I'm not. You will never see me snowboard, you will never hear me speak Spanish. Like, I'm just not going be putting that stuff out there. But what I would say is, there are qualities that, for each of those nine careers,

that people are having, or the four you've had, or the two I've had, there will be qualities underneath that will set you up for success in each of those careers. And a lot of that is emotional resilience stuff. It's adaptability, flexibility. It's being able to pick out what you can take out of a situation and learn from it rather than turning it in on yourself and becoming, you know, that become a really problematic for you. Something that you mentioned a moment ago is about writing.

I think one of the things that's got me to where I am in both of my careers is an ability to communicate and writing is a huge part of that for me. Again, I'm very lucky it comes quite naturally to me. It's part of my education and it's something that is just... But there are lots of ways around that for people who writing might not be their thing, but find the thing, find the qualities that make you good at each of those things and then apply that in all of the nine different careers.

Rosalind Chandler (40:35)
Yeah, it's really interesting. Like I obviously mentor to lots of people who are transitioning and changing careers. Do know you find a lot of people in the NHS? I find if I did a statistical model, doctors, anaesthetists and nurses, lots of those transition into flower farming, but more into florists, something creative, something's going on. Don't know what it is, whether that's the stress of work. Generally, you know, if someone says, I work for the NHS, it never surprises me at all.

Grace (40:42)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

No.

Rosalind Chandler (41:05)
never

surprises me and I think my god must be under lots of stress so they can take forward those qualities and the best freelance florists I've ever had have been nurses it's really weird so I kind of ⁓ yeah

Grace (41:13)
Mmm.

ask a question about that.

So I come from an NHS family, essentially. My father's a doctor, my mother's a nurse, my husband's a doctor. And one of the, and it was always assumed that I would, as a psychologist, I would qualify and I would go into the NHS. Ironically, I haven't because the NHS doesn't do child protection, child protection is my expertise. And so I had to find another way and that's fine. But it's very much public sector type thinking. When you go into entrepreneurship,

Every message in the NHS is don't talk about money. Money's bad. Money's the thing that's really scarce. Money is the problem. You just give of your heart. No, don't claim pure overtime. We haven't got money. It pay you very well, but you've got to do it for the love of it because there's a moral imperative. let's call it a vacation. That was a huge challenge for me to start feeling and thinking about money in a...

Rosalind Chandler (41:55)
Yeah, yeah, we won't pay you very well.

Yeah, it's a vocation. Let's call it a vocation.

Grace (42:15)
completely different way because our healthcare system, God bless it, I am grateful every day for its existence and for it being free at the point of delivery. Like there is an ethos, the NHS has my heart and that is hugely important. But for the people who work in it, in order for it to function in the way that it does, you have to develop some really messed up beliefs around money.

Rosalind Chandler (42:27)
100%.

Yeah, you do.

Grace (42:44)
and about being

paid for your worth and about charging people and about what money means. And even now, I have a, the service that I work in is not social service, it's not the local authority, it is a private sector organisation because we're an independent expert witness service for the family courts. And it's really important that we are economically independent of local authorities. But at the same time, I never look at money and I would see money, don't.

I don't touch money, nobody pays me for anything, it just appears in my bank accounts at the end of the month and I don't talk about money. And I do a bit of therapy and even in therapy, even though I know that person leaves the room with me and goes to a card reader and puts their card on, it is like just never mentioned because it's like, it's very detached. And then when you set up a business, you suddenly have to do this thing that the whole premise of your business is you say, I have this, would you like it?

Rosalind Chandler (43:28)
very detached.

Grace (43:40)
but you have to give me this for it. no. And then it just, it's such a process that you have to go through.

Rosalind Chandler (43:44)
I know, I know, I know, I

I do a course called Blooming Business, which is about taking people into a blooming business, normally about transitioning from what they're normally doing. The two biggest issues, probably two biggest issues are imposter syndrome, can I, will I, how I, I haven't done that before, I've always had a job and it went like this.

And the second biggest issue is undervaluing themselves. a massive amount around pricing. Massive, I can't tell you, because I get them to do their business strategies to begin with. And without fail, 100 % of them, I've got the pricing strategy wrong, and therefore you need put the prices up. And it's, yeah, it's this whole, yeah, value of money, and actually it's value of worth for themselves. So when you talk about hourly rates, and you talk about you're a flower farmer and how...

Grace (44:13)
Mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (44:34)
should you be earning hourly? We really talk about money a lot and I always start with the first question sort of why you're doing it and how much money do you want to earn and they're like ⁓ yeah okay well how much do need to live? What's your minimum? Let's start with that and it's quite interesting because I've always I've owned my own businesses for 25 years.

Grace (44:45)
Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (44:56)
So I've always been running my own business. My husband runs his own business. My children, when they're out of school, thought nobody went to work. Everybody runs their own business, don't they? So what do mean your parents don't run their own business? Because of course, like you say, we went back to what that's what they knew. And so...

Grace (45:11)
Yeah, yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (45:14)
Interestingly, one of them now works in the NHS, which is quite interesting, and the other one's a lawyer. So they've gone completely the other way. So maybe running your own business is not a good idea.

Grace (45:24)
think that happens. I think that happens.

it's so, it's so often, there are so many qualities that if you look at parent, children, parent, children, parent, children, that they flip, flap, flip, flap, flip, flap. And I think, you know, that, I remember having a conversation just before I qualified with my mum where I can't quite remember how she phrased it, but she essentially said that if I didn't work in the NHS after qualifying, cause the NHS fund my training, that she would disinherit me.

Rosalind Chandler (45:53)
it

Grace (45:54)
because it just it was so unbelievably ingrained that and ironically I know I mean I do have a job it's a very it's not even a nine to five job it's a 24 seven job and I'm never you know and I've had a book a day of annual leave just to do this go to John Lewis I'm going to Ashburton for lunch and then I've got an appointment and then I'm doing something else I've had to cluster everything into one day yeah because but that is in a way that is the price I pay for doing the job that I love and I would do my job if I wasn't paid for it actually

Rosalind Chandler (45:56)
In grind. Yeah, yeah,

Would you?

Grace (46:23)
honest.

Yeah I would. would. Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (46:26)
see, my entrepreneurship wouldn't do anything it didn't get paid for.

Grace (46:31)
Yeah, it's interesting isn't it? Would I? But the irony is... But the irony is...

Rosalind Chandler (46:34)
Although I do, I do give quite

a lot to cancer charities and so on and I do quite a lot of mentoring. So I do, that's not completely true. But would I do a job that I didn't get paid for?

Grace (46:44)
Yeah.

But then I think why do I do this? Why do I do all of this? And it can't just, it can't be, it is, it is. I just, I can't give it up now. I can't.

Rosalind Chandler (46:51)
in you is ingrained.

So my kids,

I say to them, so what do you get out of having two parents that run their own businesses? And they say two things. Inspiration and you work bloody hard. The two of you have always worked really hard. And my husband's 70 this year. He's a bit older than me. But he still works six days a week. And people say to him, and I say to him, well you could give up now, why don't you give up now? Why would I do that? I love it. And also...

Grace (47:06)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (47:21)
I

like the money and he's very honest about the money because he's an entrepreneur. So, and would people say the same to me and I would probably say the same thing.

Grace (47:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's, it is worth so much. It's worth the time to reflect on, you know, we talk about why in a sort of a very individualistic way now. So it's everyone find your purpose, find your why. I think it's nonsense. don't think, I think there's lots of the why stuff is we're a bundle of cells put on the earth and we've evolved outside of probably what we should have done. And we've all, it's all meaningless anyway. Just find a thing that gets you through the day. ⁓

Rosalind Chandler (47:46)
Yeah.

Grace (48:01)
But the why in terms of is this your why? Is this somebody else's why? Is this society's why? Is it a family why? Like what is guiding your decision making and your choices? Massive decisions, life changing decisions. And just make sure they're yours. Make sure you actually do choose this. Yeah, you're not being driven by expectation or you're being driven by that sort of familial programming about what's acceptable and what's safe and what's, you know.

Rosalind Chandler (48:19)
and you enjoy doing them.

Grace (48:31)
just have a bit of a think about that because and not only yeah absolutely absolutely and see what falls and if you pick something up and you say do you know what I think these beliefs about my worth and about money and about value are gendered men don't sit around thinking oh do you think I could possibly set up a business they just do it you know um is it from the end yeah is it from the nhs is it is it

Rosalind Chandler (48:34)
Yeah, throw it all up in the air.

They are gendered. Age?

Grace (49:01)
Is Is it philosophical? Is it a condition of worth in your friendship group or your group of people that this is sort how you do things? And it's interesting that you say that your children have made their choices, but they've been exposed to options because you very much modeled that there are options and there are lots of different ways of doing things and each of those has its own merits. And then if you choose to put it down and say, I don't think actually I want to keep that, then just do it because it's that sort of stuff that will keep you.

A. Stuck and B. Incredibly unhappy.

Rosalind Chandler (49:34)
I say to my girls, I say to my lawyer, my corporate lawyer, it's even worse. I say to her, say to her in the city, it gets worse by the minute, I say to her, why don't you have your own law practice? And I can't resist it. And then my youngest daughter, it's a bit more entrepreneurial. She looks at our house on the farm and she wants to run a clinic. wants to have her own anorexic clinic or an addiction clinic. So I said, well, I haven't died yet. You can't have it yet. But she said, she's got vines, I'm coming to take over.

the farm to run it as a therapy clinic and that's quite entrepreneurial so who knows 10 years from now but it is quite interesting both non-entrepreneurial at the

Grace (50:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I wonder if that's about wanting the boundaries and the structure though.

Rosalind Chandler (50:19)
Yeah,

don't want to work so hard, don't want to work for a certain time of day, don't want to work weekends. There was definitely structure.

Grace (50:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, I had one job. I used to work at the, when I first moved down to London, I had a job as a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry in Denmark Hill. And it was my, was, I mean, I was young, it was London. I was having such a lovely time. I drank lots and went out lots and it was great. But it was the only job I've ever had that I literally turned up at nine o'clock, got on the bus, turned up nine o'clock. And then I left my office at five, or I was doing community visits and stuff like that. But I finished at five.

And I didn't think about it again. literally, the phone didn't ring. I didn't get an email. Like I just, that was the only job I was there half years. There was no homework. There was no coursework. There were no essays. I know I'm just, live from report deadline to report deadline and I work evenings at Kansas. So I can see that by watching you having that life of entrepreneurship, which is amazing and is, there are so many wonderful things about it that they thought actually I want the start point and the end point.

Rosalind Chandler (51:01)
and enjoy.

Yeah, because there's no boundaries. There are no boundaries. When you work for yourself, there are no boundaries. At all.

Grace (51:25)
I can see that. There are no boundaries.

And then I think, surely Roz surely we should be able to do this. Surely we should be able to, we should have internal boundaries that mean that you clock off, but I'm just not a clocky offy sort of person.

Rosalind Chandler (51:41)
No, my laptop sits on my lap in front of telly and if it's not the laptop, it's the phone. I don't know whether it's my mind's all over the place all the time. The only way I don't work, which is quite sad, is if I go out for the day and I make a conscious decision to go out and do something. If I'm at home, because the farm is here, there's always something to do. So, yeah, interesting. Maybe we need to merge the two and put some boundaries in. Maybe that's a lesson for today.

Grace (51:54)
Mmm

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Well, my New Year's resolution, which has failed catastrophically, is that I work at my job Monday to Friday. Saturdays, I do this and I do writing and I do photography and I pack seeds and I sow sweet peas. And then Sunday, I put my phone onto airplane mode and I have a bit of a Sabbath. It has failed catastrophically. Yeah. No, no, digital detox. Absolute, absolute nonsense.

Rosalind Chandler (52:31)
That's it, Beth. I thought you were going to tell me it was wonderful. I was going to give it a go.

Grace (52:39)
I remember somebody said, can't remember, said something on Instagram about the fact that I was sort of a bad person because I slept with my phone under my pillow and they were appalled. And first of all, I need to have something read to me to fall asleep. So I listen to a lot of audiobooks when I don't sleep brilliantly. So I have lots of audiobooks and I have to put on at two and then put on at three. And then I said, God, I sleep with two phones under my pillow because I have my work phone as well. And I don't go to sleep until I've had the, we have a...

Rosalind Chandler (52:58)
Yeah.

Grace (53:06)
an evening email that comes around just to say everyone's fine, everyone's safe and all children go to bed and all that sort of stuff. And I can't, it comes in about 10 past 10. Sometimes I write it cause I'm on call, but I can't go to bed until I've had the email. And then I just sort of just have my phone there just in case. So yeah, no, I can't help feeling having had this conversation now, I feel a bit silly that having sort of pontificated quite smugly about, you know, challenging your own beliefs and examining your own ways of doing things and that.

probably there is a better way of balancing your children's approach in your own. I might need to think about. Yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (53:37)
I'm going to come and nick those two phones off you. ⁓ I like sleeping.

I'm quite the opposite. I love sleeping. I will do nine hours a night.

Grace (53:46)
mmm ⁓

god that would be amazing but i can't remember ⁓

Rosalind Chandler (53:50)
I just like sleeping. Put the electric blanket on.

It's nice and hot. Sorry, I like sleeping.

Grace (53:55)
⁓

Yeah, I'd, yeah. do,

people do often say to me, their shortcut for how do you do everything you do is often, do you even sleep? Like lots of people say, I bet you don't even sleep. And I say, 10 till six, I might be scrolling and I might be reading email, but I'm not actually doing anything. I'm very much, yeah. I do need more sleep, yeah.

Rosalind Chandler (54:15)
That's quite nice, eight hours, but you need more sleep than that. So I will

let you go, because you need to go to John Lewis, Ash Burton, see some friends. It's your day off. Boundaries, we're talking about boundaries, which isn't great, is it? So I will let you go.

Grace (54:21)
It's a oo. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well it's a flowery day so it's Becca

Stewart and Joanna Game in Ashburton so I know I'm doing ⁓ flower royalty today, I'm very excited. I will.

Rosalind Chandler (54:33)
⁓ come on! God, you could have invited me, I'd have been there. Absolutely. Say hello to them both, they are flowering already.

I feel like I'm missing out now. That's another trait. So they can find you over on your website and we can find you on Instagram of course. Tell us where they can find you Instagram.

Grace (54:52)
Yes

so I'm Grace Alexander Flowers ⁓ on Instagram and my website is gracealexanderflowers.co.uk I'm also in the Garden Collective now but all the links to that are through my website and through my Instagram

Rosalind Chandler (55:07)
Brilliant. Thank you, Grace. I'll let you know when this goes live, but thank you for coming over. We could have talked all day, couldn't we? ⁓

Grace (55:14)
We literally could. This is the problem trying

to fit so much in. We should have just allowed at least two and a half to three hours for this conversation for the pre, the post and the middle and a bit of mentoring and a bit of, yeah, all sorts of stuff.

Rosalind Chandler (55:19)
and we could have put the world to right.

I will come and see you, I promise.

Grace (55:29)
Yes,

absolutely, you'll be very welcome.

Rosalind Chandler (55:32)
Say hello to the others for me and I'll see you soon. Thank you, bye bye bye.

Grace (55:34)
I All right, take care. Bye.