FARMER, FLORIST, SEED GROWER & AUTHOR MILLI PROUST

In this engaging interview, Milli Proust shares her journey from acting to floral artistry, her passion for seed breeding, and her innovative approach to sustainable flower farming. Discover practical tips on propagation, seed saving, and designing with seasonal flowers, along with insights into her upcoming projects and books.

Takeaways

• Milli's journey from acting to floral artistry
• Seed breeding and propagation techniques
• Designing sustainable and seasonal flower borders

You can purchase Milli's book here

Follow Milli on Instagram here or view her website here

First Tunnels, leaders in domestic and commercial product tunnels. 

• https://fieldgateflowers.kartra.com/page/newsletters
• The Growth Club: https://fieldgateflowers.kartra.com/page/thegrowthclub
• Lots of free resources on our website: https://thecutflowercollective.co.uk/cut-flower-resources/
•  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fieldgateflowers  
•  Facebook Group 'Cut Flower Farming  - Growth and Profit in your business' https://www.facebook.com/groups/449543639411874
•  Facebook Group 'The Cut Flower Collection' https://www.facebook.com/groups/cutflowercollection 

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:00)
So hello and welcome back to the Cut Flower podcast. So now today's episode feels like one of those conversations I've been really looking forward to for a long time. And because we're not just talking about flowers, we're to go much deeper than that. We're talking about what sits beneath them, the creativity, the emotion, the why behind the work. Why did we even get involved with this? And I think in an industry that sometimes looks very beautiful on the outside, it's definitely not on the inside. It's these conversations that really matter. So today I'm joined by Millie Proust.

floral artist, creative and now author of a brand new book which we'll be talking about and Millie has built a body of work that feels incredibly thoughtful and intentional and I'm really looking forward to digging into a big deeper into the her story how it all begun what shaped it and where she's heading to next so Millie welcome it's so lovely to have you so tell us where did it all begin what did you start with

speaker-1 (00:52)
It's so nice to be here and like finally meet because we've I must have been in the industry for the same amount of time but never met. No, not good. So hi, thanks for having me on. Where did it all begin? It began, well really it began a long time before I started. There was like to use a very obvious analogy there was a seed of flowers way back when I was leaving school but I left school.

in 2018 and that was when the crash happened, the economic crash and high streets really were taking the hit and any kind of high street job was just not advised. So I was interested in being a florist. I come from a family of creative types and some are teachers and some are painters and others do curation and collection.

I wanted to be creative and I was doing acting and drawing, but my brother was always a much better drawer than I am. is now actually an artist. Well, went and so my, my career advisor told me not to go to the high, don't do a florist because the high streets. So that was the only idea of floristry back then that I had access to.

speaker-0 (01:57)
I've an actor.

speaker-1 (02:10)
didn't really know about wedding and event floristry and people weren't showing their work on social media yet and it was really just like Facebook that Instagram was just in the early days and I took their advice and and didn't go for floristry and went for acting instead but I turned out I have really bad stage fright and I really didn't I thought training might get it out of me but it didn't

So I did three years at RADA and had the most amazing time learning about people and story and creating atmosphere. And I loved it so much. But when I came out into the industry and going into auditions, I spent every day feeling so nauseous and sick and couldn't eat. And I was like, this is not sustainable. I've got to figure out another way. And about a year and a half after that, I grew up in London.

I always knew that I think I might fare better out of London and a year and a half after graduating I left London and it felt like such a big leap. think I was only like 26 and I, it was definitely the right thing. It was a real gamble of right mid twenties.

speaker-0 (03:19)
Definitely, because I mean, I've got two daughters who were that age and they both moved into London. And I've actually got one who's living with an actor. So I've got you. Yeah. He did three years and now he's actually he wants to be Shakespearean actor. So he does the Globe and that sort of So he loves that. And my daughter wanted to do musical theatre. So we went down that route. So she was much more of a dancer and singer. But she's ended up being a psychotherapist in CAMHS.

speaker-1 (03:36)
That's what I wanted to do too.

speaker-0 (03:48)
for 12 to 17 year old with addictions, sort of things like, and she uses dance and drama therapy, she did a masters in dance and drama therapy. So she uses that as her kind of crux to help people. But they actually go into London and you've got them the other way.

speaker-1 (04:01)
Yeah,

I do think, you know, no matter what you end up doing, it's not a wasted degree. I learned so much about storytelling, which I use all the time. And that's why I love writing books and about people I'm really interested in. And I think what's so amazing about flowers and why I've always been so drawn to them and why they live so well side by side with the acting is that we send flowers in lieu of ourselves when we can't be there.

We send flowers when we can't, when we don't have the words, send flowers. I saw that so clearly when I, pivoted my business in 2020 to be nationwide bouquets when all the weddings and events had to be postponed. And, the notes that I were writing for each of the bouquets was truly the sort of most lovely parts of humanity. And I felt so, I felt even deeper in love with flowers that year.

about what they, the power that they can hold. So not a wasted degree at all, think, and a very great.

speaker-0 (04:58)
I love funeral work for exact, you know when I say that to people they look really odd. it's my favourite. And I say it's a favourite, it's the time to express somebody's life.

speaker-1 (05:07)
Honestly, when I get those calls, so we don't now, just a caveat, we actually did our last event in December. I'm trying to take them off my plate, but I'd probably still do funerals because when I do get those messages and calls, it's like being party to the most intimate parts of people. And I think it's so tender and so beautiful.

And as someone who's working with the natural world and experiencing many deaths of the natural world all the time, I feel like really okay around death. And I find actually being a sort of vessel for the people who are grieving really, really rewarding. It's hard to find the words, but I know that you get it. And then when you make the flowers, there's never anyone more.

happy about the work you've done than people celebrating life in that way. And it's so different from the experience of doing weddings and big grand events. It's so different and I think it's so much more human and so much more special and I just love doing funerals.

speaker-0 (06:06)
What made you move out of the wedding industry? I mean you were big, you did loads of big events. Was it just burnout? Was it just too much?

speaker-1 (06:13)
It was a few things. well, firstly, when I moved out of London, couldn't make it work full time. the beginning, had to create a portfolio and clients over three, the space of three years while I was still commuting back to London, doing archiving work. it three years before I could go full time with the flowers.

So was sort of doing weddings on the weekends and all the sort of admin on in the evenings on the train on the way back. And that, I mean, I had the energy then to sort of do it. then COVID was a really lovely pivot and then had a big sort of had to catch up with the COVID weddings in 2021. And then at the end of 2021, I got pregnant with my first son and I had a high premises, Gravidarum, which is...

extreme vomiting during pregnancy. Yeah, 50 times a day for the whole pregnancy.

speaker-0 (07:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, I know one person who's had it. It was Scrim. Life's Grim.

speaker-1 (07:13)
really great yeah prenatal depression and I was bed bound and a lot of time in hospital for me is my idea of hell so that was a real test of stamina and then we had a bad time we almost lost him and then I got really ill and I was in intensive care for a month after it was a real lesson if I can't be there and I had a wedding five weeks

speaker-0 (07:33)
Wow.

speaker-1 (07:40)
five and a half weeks after he was born, which I tried to shift and it shifted already twice from COVID. And I got Paris, who was just working locally, doing a similar thing to me to step in just in case I couldn't be there. And thank goodness, because I'd only been out of hospital for a week and I could barely stand. I did the bouquet, but Paris did the rest of the wedding and she'd never done a wedding before. So I talked her through it with this tiny, tiny newborn with my body completely in tatters.

my energy completely dead. couldn't, I mean, I could not walk more than like 20 steps and it took at least six to eight months to start being strong again and stop having heart palpitations. it was, yeah, it was a really intense time. And Paris and I, after that experience, we decided, I had such an amazing time working with her that I knew instinctively. And I think she did too that we'd found a really good partner and.

we quite quickly made the decision to go into business together. Because what I'd learned is that it's unsustainable working just on your own.

speaker-0 (08:42)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. It's dangerous, it's lonely, it's hard work. If you're real, you've had it.

speaker-1 (08:47)
Yeah, and that you can't do that with weddings and events. And so we went in together and she really loves turns out she loves wedding days and event days. But for me, they feel like an audition and I get really nauseous and feel sick.

speaker-0 (09:01)
They

are an addition. You're on stage. You are on stage.

speaker-1 (09:05)
Yeah, and the whole like prep and all of it I find quite stressful. So I knew that I didn't like, it might not be the right fit again. I was like faced with the thing of like, this is not sustainable for me. So I started doing seeds in 2018, but we also started doing seeds in 2020. So we then combined our seed company called Alma Proust and we had that as our side hustle to the design work. And we were like, we can make this work. You love the day, like the wedding days. I can talk to the brides.

beforehand, I can design the flowers and then you just, that you manage the team on the day. I'll be there as a florist, but you can manage the team on the day. So we did that and we, we hit it really hard, 2023, 2024. And 2024, we did so many large scale weddings and we were working seven days a week. And I have, I had a two year old, I was just about recovered in my, my health and my husband works away abroad.

NOPE!

speaker-0 (10:03)
What? It's getting worse by the minute.

speaker-1 (10:05)
for about 170 days a year. So I just suddenly realized it's completely, my poor son was being left completely alone with whoever was available to help out with childcare. yeah, there was, there were big decisions were made a couple of years ago to start winding it down. So in 2024 that, that year nearly broke us and we said, we'll be careful about what we say yes to next year.

So 2025, we just had six weddings and that was a really small year for us. we much preferred it and we love making flowers. I love making flowers for love and I love designing flowers, but still there was this itch of the seeds have been doing so well and we love that process and we love, we've started messing around with breeding work for last three years.

We just didn't have time enough time to focus on that. And we, so we made the decision. said, let's call it 2026. weddings events. We moved, we moved as well. we're setting up the field from scratch. And so we knew we've done that a few times. I've like begged and borrowed bits of land from other people. So this is my fifth between us. This is our fifth new field set up. we know how much work it takes to set up a field and we need to do it properly. And we need to get the seed crop that we grow in the ground and.

we knew that we couldn't sort of dilute our energy too much. So we said absolutely no to any weddings and events this year. And it feels amazing!

speaker-0 (11:31)
I think you should have a gold star for that because there is an interim period isn't there where the because weddings obviously 18 months in a part You know and so there's an interim period and yet you've still got a field with nothing on it yet so you've still got this kind of All that work with a bare field which lots of startup flower farmers have got it's hard physically and emotionally hard

speaker-1 (11:53)
Yeah, I can talk about that lot because I feel like I'm a pro at starting from scratch. always had, so when I started it was always, I always had the first small plot that I was growing on. And that was, I was cultivating about a sixth of an acre, but then using more of that, more space for bulbs and for roses and perennials and shrubs. But I borrowed off a neighbor.

And then I borrowed off, then I rented from a farmer and Paris rented off a family member. And then now we've got this place and this is the first time that we've taken, we don't have any other plot. I've always been kind of across a couple of plots since the first time, but it means that we really have very little. So if I even wanted to do a wedding, actually, couldn't apart, unless I, and I do love supporting other growers around here locally.

So buying in is always, if we have a big event, we always go and find some flowers from Milestone Farm Girls, not too far, she's like an hour and a half. And when we first started, there was really no other growers around here, but now there's a good handful. And the Prairie edit is really nearby and she's focusing on growing for florists. So we feel really, now I feel like maybe I should just be a florist and grow.

But I love growing so much, so we've made that decision to be growers of seed for now. And then we can always be open to what happens next.

speaker-0 (13:16)
Who

knows five years from now. So tell me about the plot. What are you growing? Tell me about seeds. It's a really interesting thing because first of all, aren't that many seeds in the UK, number one, and we need to talk about that. Number two, you know, what are you growing? What did you decide? How are you doing it? You know, it's that hybrid. I mean, it's a whole different, I mean, it's a different business. It's completely separate.

speaker-1 (13:37)
So it's very similar but different and we did it side by side to the cut flower growing and the event stuff. And the best seeds that you can get are the first ones that you get from the plants. If you're cutting all the time you're sort of diminishing the strength and energy. So I like to think that you should leave separate crop for seed.

And sometimes it's just one plant is enough. So amaranthus, for example, we just need to one stem and we've enough seed to provide.

speaker-0 (14:11)
Everyone in the United Kingdom.

speaker-1 (14:13)
But then things like sweet peas, which is what we specialize in is a lot more labor intensive and resource intensive. They require quite a lot of water and we grow two 48 foot tunnels of them. And then we have an outdoor crop as well. But we still cut the sweet peas just for documenting. we like the last year when we did our small amount of weddings, we cut a few for them. So you can.

speaker-0 (14:28)
So.

speaker-1 (14:38)
You can do both at the same time, but it does feel slightly separate. It's the same processes. We just watch the flowers in their whole life cycle. And then for us now, hopefully this year, summer will be our downtime and we get to document and breed. And then in August starts to get really fast for us again. Then we're collecting and then cleaning and drying. And then we hand pack.

every

speaker-0 (15:05)
Do you? Wow.

speaker-1 (15:07)
We

went to Florette last year and Erin's been an amazing mentor and so supportive teaching us so many tips and tricks to get the best seed crop. I think it's because we're interested in it from early doors around the time that she was interested in and she's so brilliant and generous at sharing her hard-won knowledge. It was amazing to see some of the things that they have learnt and they do.

It's a full on time, is seed cleaning time, but it's, I think it's extraordinarily fun. And it's also very empowering to save your own seed and get interesting crosses that you can't get at all on the market.

speaker-0 (15:42)
was going to say, mean, because obviously you can get through, it's one of the only plants, isn't it? You can get through to it.

speaker-1 (15:48)
There's quite a

few. Erin is doing lots of research. I'm sure it will be on her seed book. We've been doing research too. There are some things that are really promiscuous that are really hard to nail down. We are trying to either encourage people to lean into mixes and the idea of spontaneous joy that you get from not knowing what you're going to get, but you maybe know the color palette. I know as a wedding designer and grower that

that's a difficult thing to do. Although I do believe that what our USP is that's different from other types of florists is that we can have loads of different things in an arrangement that looks beautiful and garden grown because if a florist is going to the market, they have to buy in huge wraps. So buying loads of little things is actually very expensive to do. I do think that is our USP, but getting people to lean into mixes and then trying to...

speaker-0 (16:33)
So they can't do that.

speaker-1 (16:40)
wean people off things like snapdragons. about, about 75 % of what we sell seed wise is from us and the others we have to get in from other breeders. So we have like colibri poppies, for example, are these amazing, amazing poppies, but they've got a patent on them. So even if we saved the seed from them, it would be illegal for us to sell it on. Right. So there is patents like that.

And then there's the pansies, which are really, really hard to keep true in their sold as mixes, but there's amazing people been doing 40, 50 years, like two generations of a family, breeding them and they're in Italy. So that's the pansies that we sell from Italy. And then we try as much as possible to learn and research what stays true. And then there's isolation that we can do, but there are other plants that do stay pretty true. Now there's not a hundred percent rate.

But we test enough and grow enough to see that things like Amaranthus, if you plant them at one end of an acre and then another crop at the other end of the acre, it's absolutely fine. There's not any cross. So there's lots of ways. then so the sweet peas, they've got this keel that's clamped and that's where the stamen lives. And that's why bees can't get in and pollinate, they're self pollinating. So they're already doing the thing before they are even open enough for an incense to get in.

things like larksbara are pretty similar. So there's lots of things that are very good at staying true that we can then grow and share out. But it's also just making people aware that because they're all open pollinated, even in sweet peas, there'll be a rogue here and there. that's not necessarily a failing.

speaker-0 (18:12)
It's

fun. It's when you go along some white Aphrodite for instance and you've got a red one. I think it's like that's the black sheep of the family.

speaker-1 (18:20)
Well, and sometimes that's, and that's how sweet peas, for example, progress and novelty has come because a rogue throws up like a random genetic. might not even be a cross pollination. It's just a genetic twinge. And, sweet peas are fairly historically new plants. Fences were only sort of created in, I think it's like 1850, really not that long ago. So we're only in like the first 140 years of sweet peas and

what we're seeing, having spoken to Roger Parsons and Phil at English Sweet Peas now, he's got the national collection, that they're seeing that it's called, it's when it breaks basically, it's old, some strains stay for a really long time, have been true for, since like 1910, but some newer varieties can be fine for 10 years and then they start to break up.

That's an interesting thing. And I'm also interested to get hold of those varieties that break up because then they're making new varieties. then it can take up to 12 years to stabilize a variety. So when it starts becoming true and true and true, then you know that you can release it into the world. But for us, it's like the most interesting, geeky thing. It's really geeky. And love it.

speaker-0 (19:31)
Yeah, I was given, because I normally grow Spencer varieties because they're tall and they're great for work and all of us, and that's why I grow them. In fact, all of ours. I think we plant about 500. but this year, I was staying with some friends in Devon and their next door neighbor's one of these geeky sweet pea men. You know how some people have done it their whole lives? I mean, he's probably in his eighties. And he had this whole bag, polythene bag of seeds that he'd collected. No idea what they were. No idea.

I thought this is great fun, gave them all to me, the whole lot, thousands of the things. And so we planted them. I have no idea.

speaker-1 (20:03)
Roz, I've got to come see you.

I'm pretty good at knowing a sweet pea now when we see it, a variety. So if you want, we could come and we could try and ID some stuff.

speaker-0 (20:13)
Yeah, I learned it. I'll let you know, because we too are growing undercover and outside. And the ones undercover have gone mad, which is great. So it's not going to be long. And the ones outside, we grow up Harris Fencing because my husband's a builder. So it's always there. It's great. It's useful. But I do love a sweet pea. I do love it.

speaker-1 (20:29)
Me too, they bring so much joy. I can never get enough. Paris has been a sweet pea obsessive for a really long time and I loved them. But roses are my favorite thing, but Sims hanging out with Paris and her enthusiasm is infectious. So we've been specializing in them for the last three, four years. And this year we're growing 150 varieties. And we have so variety.

speaker-0 (20:52)
I know I'm thinking varieties that's a lot I didn't know there were 150 varieties

speaker-1 (20:59)
1300. So, uh, Phil has got that and, we've got around 400 varieties in our bank, but we'd love to keep growing our bank. We just want to look at every single one and just, we're looking really for, we're looking for her use. So obviously I have a specific taste in color, but I appreciate that every single person has a different taste in color. we're looking for sort of like special colors that

that feel like they can be used really easily in design work and sentence stem length and also vase life, because they all have slightly different vase life. that's why we want to look at them all. We just want to see every single one. And we have the spreadsheet that Roger worked on for a long time with all the information about each and every variety. there's not pictures for everything. And I am just so greedy to look at everything. So desperate to one day grow every single.

speaker-0 (21:54)
I was going to say maybe that's your legacy. I grew every single variety of sweet. That would be pretty amazing. That's a lot.

speaker-1 (22:01)
Yeah, we've also

been working on a couple of new ones. So we've got some exciting things in the pipeline. We just have to wait until we know that they're fixed.

speaker-0 (22:09)
And roses are your favourite, what's your favourite rose? I've got one. Queen of Sweden. Beautiful scented layered long vase life, not prickly.

speaker-1 (22:13)
Yeah, go and tell me. It's beautiful.

Yeah.

also I love how she sort of has a sort of structural way of being that I don't see in any other rose. She's very upright and elegant. Yeah. I've got like a few. It depends on where I'm going to put her. yeah. Roses are amazing. Cause I mean, they're tough. I feel like they're so female cause they're so tough. You can cut them down to the ground and they will still come back.

speaker-0 (22:29)
Yes.

And she's definitely a her.

Yes.

speaker-1 (22:49)
And she's beautiful, she smells great, but she's got some thorns.

speaker-0 (22:53)
That's why I like them.

speaker-1 (22:56)
I love them. So, Mocka Rosa is a really beautiful one that I use for design work a lot.

speaker-0 (23:01)
That's come in, hasn't it? You know, we're talking about trends, Mokka's come in for sure. I don't know whether it was the Pantone colour of the year that did it. She was there before. Maybe she influenced the Pantone colour of the year the other way around. And yeah, I think that's quite an interesting thing.

speaker-1 (23:08)
But it's she was well, I've pushing.

Someone who's really good at colour and I think ahead of the trends always is India, Vervain Flowers and she's the one who sent me the link to where to find Mockerosa in the first place. So she should definitely get credit where credit's due. And her use of colour is so amazing if you don't know.

speaker-0 (23:33)
So you know I'm off to buy the mocha rose, don't you?

speaker-1 (23:35)
Yeah, good,

She's really, I find her really healthy and very vigorous. so the things that I love in roses, because there's some which have beautiful color, but if they're, if they're gonna need extra help, they fall out of favor a bit with me. They need to be really, really robust. So even though it's not my favorite color, Olivia Rose Austin has always been the first to flower and the last to flower for me and incredibly

through the season and healthy and thrives in real partial shade. right.

speaker-0 (24:08)
right, I don't need to buy anymore, stop it!

speaker-1 (24:10)
I know, sorry. Well, when they don't have patents on, if they get past the patent, then you can take cuttings.

speaker-0 (24:16)
Yeah, we do a lot of that, obviously as a flower farmer. Because there's one way, know, about increasing your stock, which you're going to have to do.

speaker-1 (24:22)
Which, it taught this to bring this to the book is one thing that I learned as a flower farmer, the steep learning curve. And I'm sure you had this too, is that you need to have really good propagation skills to make the margins work. I got really good at, mean, seed sowing for me, obviously is one of my greatest passions and I absolutely love it more than anything, but taking cuttings and tricks like layering. putting the stem to the ground and I made it forms extra roots. I burn them. Love it.

Love it. And you can do it with cosmos too. If you need extra cosmos plants and you need, it's like a rabbit got in, you can do it with cosmos really easily. You just pin it to the ground, stem, and then it will make a new plant for you. And I love all of that. And even like pinching out the tops of sweet peas and propagating.

speaker-0 (25:03)
So we call it plants for free.

speaker-1 (25:07)
And it's really valuable as a, not only a flower farmer, I mean, it's vital for a flower farmer, but really valuable for if you're creating a garden, a garden can be so expensive. I've written a couple of books about from a flower farming lens, but this was my first one about from a gardening lens. And I obviously poured all the knowledge that I have as a flower farmer into it. And so I wanted a large chapter to be on propagation techniques because I don't think-

speaker-0 (25:17)
Yeah, agreed.

I saw that.

We talked about that. because the propagation is, it's something we do a lot of, obviously. It's something we teach massively. We actually run a course called Plants for Free, unbelievably. But it's all about, I mean, I love it. I love getting something for nothing. Maybe that's a childhood thing. I used to play with clay and make pots and think, this is for nothing. And maybe that's an extension of that.

But propagation, think, is underrated. I don't like the word propagation. If we could call it something else, it makes it sound really formal. It's not very friendly, is it?

speaker-1 (26:03)
Yeah, it makes it sound like it's scary or hard to do because it sounds more like scientific, whereas actually it's just about, I think it's about teasing plants out from nature. It feels like abundance, teasing abundance out.

speaker-0 (26:16)
So we need a new word for propagation because it sounds very masculine. It does. And very scientific and very like you can't really do it.

speaker-1 (26:25)
I plants are freeze-grade because then it just, you it's very human. think what's really so delicious about it is that that's how it always would have been and those skills would have been passed down. And I feel like that's the thing that we get that has got lost. It's a bit harder to find.

speaker-0 (26:39)
lost.

It's very lost from the old guy on the allotment. If you're lucky enough to have an allotment with some old guy who's been there for years and he's going to tell you how to do it then take everything he's got to tell you. We've lost that. We've definitely lost that.

speaker-1 (26:52)
So, bringing it back with Roz's course, that's for free in my book, a hard sell.

speaker-0 (26:58)
100 % let's bring it back and let's find a new word for propagation. I mean I'm sitting here looking at my shelf and I've got propagating plants as the biggest book there. It just can't be called something else. We have definitely got to call it something else.

speaker-1 (27:11)
also

because like I'm not going to pick up a book which says that is this big as says propagating plants where do you start you just want clear easy advice like the handful of best easiest ways to do it yeah and seed sowing obviously that's this we get lots of like questions about how to germinate things best and how to plant so we do we share a lot of free resources on that because every seed kind of needs specific treatment but kind of not it's can be as simple as checking it

out like my favorite way of propagating seeds and I have a book called seeds about propagating states and it's got a handy chart of like best temperatures and if it needs light or dark but my favorite thing to for the and this is about 80 of the seeds that I so I do the same method which is I do it in a little tiny tray because then I can fit loads in a small space tiny tray and we have a compost mix not seed compost we don't use

speaker-0 (28:08)
I don't use seed compost

speaker-1 (28:09)
It dries out too quick. It's too fine. So we use a general purpose and we love Silver Grow. We get asked a lot. So we're using Silver Grow this year. Me too, me too. It's really good. too. Fantastic. then we put in a bit of either horticultural grit or perlite. Perlite is an unsightly unsustainable way because it is a finite resource. So if you can use horticultural grit and then you mix that in.

speaker-0 (28:20)
Just to live in a pallet load.

speaker-1 (28:36)
And that's the simplest recipe that we use. I pop that in the trays and I fill up all the trays and then I go and take all the seeds that I'm going to do and I write their labels beforehand and then I go out and I just sprinkle gently one by one, pop in the label as I go. And then I put a gentle covering of compost over the top. Now the only plants that I don't do that for is the ones that need light or that need specific dark and then it get treated differently. And the ones that need light, I'll just pop a propagator lid on. I'll press them down into the soil.

and then make sure that I rub any off my hands and then pop propagator lid on. And then once you see germination, take the propagator lid off. But that's literally how I treat 80 % of my seed propagation.

speaker-0 (29:15)
mean the biggest questions we get asked, we run an eight month course on growing and it starts in February and goes till October but the biggest problem all the time is German, and two things, propagation but germination and normally it's either not a lot of light, too much light or too wet.

speaker-1 (29:32)
Too wet is such a problem? Big problem. But it's such a difficult thing to explain. And it's a question that I've tried to tackle in a couple of my books and with people who ask those sorts of questions. My books are basically answers to questions I get asked on these letters. I totally agree. It makes it very easy. But watering is such a thing. People always ask it how much do I need to water? Do I need to water every day? the answer is, the best answer I've come up with is that you

speaker-0 (29:48)
That's the best way to write a book.

speaker-1 (30:02)
It's like there's a real fine line and once you know it, it's so obvious But you don't want it wet and you don't want it dry

speaker-0 (30:11)
No,

I always say lift the pot up and get it's almost like putting on a set almost like the perfect is putting on a set of scales and seeing how heavy the pot is because it can be dry at the top and really wet at the bottom and seeds do not want soggy bottoms.

speaker-1 (30:24)
and they also but they do need seeds need to germinate scientifically they just need consistent moisture but they don't want to be wet they just want to be moist so i just pop into the greenhouse every day i was ill on the weekend so i didn't do it on the weekend and they're fine you know they're they survived and they are we're we're really good at seed germination now so like our germination rates are really good so i know i know how to do it and i know how to do it well

speaker-0 (30:41)
And they survived.

speaker-1 (30:53)
So a couple of days is not gonna, but if you do that constantly, if you're going in only every other day, that might be a problem. Cause some days if it's really hot or really windy, and it gets dry on the surface, you just need to give it a light, very, very gentle light hosing. And I think it also matters about what kind of thing you're watering with. If you're watering with a hose that's got no rose on it, you're gonna wash them away and they're

then the seeds really aren't there or where you put them. You need such a fine, gentle pattering of rain. You don't want a rainstorm, you want like drizzle, like really misty drizzle.

speaker-0 (31:30)
Early on I tend to wet the ceiling of the polytunnel. I don't even put it on the seeds. wet so it's almost like it is raining and that makes it thinner.

speaker-1 (31:34)
inches

Interesting. think one thing that we're really, really keen on as well to get really good germination is air circulation. So we open and close the greenhouse pretty much every single day. If it's not windy and it's not getting really, really cold at night, we'll keep it open. But otherwise, we're closing it before it gets dark and we're opening it first thing in the morning and opening all the windows and getting that air in. We find that even

So if you've got more tender things and you are starting them early, you want to make sure that they're maybe you've got extra coddling with the heat map, but otherwise they all benefit from air circulation.

speaker-0 (32:18)
what we do in and out in and out open doors close the doors I spend my whole life it hokey-kokey plants out my garden put a minute night it's fine so tell us about the book you've written your latest book obviously you're prolific writer and I admire anyone who's a prolific writer I've only done a couple of books I have to say it's really tough what made you do this new one tell us all about

speaker-1 (32:26)
is.

Yeah, I just.

Okay,

so this one, I obviously was a florist, a flower farming florist. And even though I was sharing mainly the flowers that I was growing and the farm setting, I was also sharing a bit of, was growing in my garden as well. And I was sharing not just the sort of flower production I showing, started showing my garden as a whole. And I got more and more questions, less questions of, how do you do...

your floral arrangements. Well, how long does that flower last? Less of those and more of, wow, how do you plant a border? How do you have a border looking nice through the year? How do you have something to work with ingredients-wise throughout the year? How do you look after your soil? How do you make your fences? All these questions every day. I just was, that was like my main sort of time spent on social media. I try and connect with as many people as possible. ask questions. So let's just replying to these and.

I had finished, my book came out, my first book came out in 2022 and a few months after my lovely editor and designer came over and they said, we really want you to do another. And said, well, I've got, this idea from these questions I get and they loved it, but it took four years from that point to come out almost four years. So that was like three and a half years ago and

It was, yeah, it took a long time because writing is hard. something that I really wanted it to be really useful and really accessible. And that just took a lot of time and love to make sure that it covered every single thing that I thought you needed to know. And then my sister got her first garden a year and a bit into writing it. And she read my manuscript and said, well, I started asking more questions.

and saying, what's this word mean? You know, for things like stratification. And obviously there's so many things now I take for granted and like propagation and like just like the simple steps. She's like, well, what do you mean by sowing undercover? So I wanted to, she made me realize how many bits I'd missed.

speaker-0 (34:59)
No,

it's almost as someone asked me about sowing undercover yesterday reminds me because for us it's natural but does that mean indoors? Does that mean in a cold frame? Does that mean in a greenhouse or does it mean in a polytunnel? What does it actually mean? Completely.

speaker-1 (35:10)
Yeah, and we take it becomes intuitive for us.

So I started answering her questions and it was so useful. she became sort of like such a co-pilot for a bit. had absolutely, she really, she was my ideal. She was the person I was writing the book for really, because I wanted to write the book for someone who really wanted to have a garden. Had maybe grown a few things, but was just didn't know and didn't, wasn't finding it.

wasn't going to go on a garden course or anything like that, but needed something that they could just pick up and that they were doing it on their weekend or as a hobby or beside bringing up children. so she started asking all the questions and she read the manuscript, I think seven different times, because you go through so many different edits and she was such a help and all the questions she asked completely shaped the book. And yeah, it took a long time and I...

The feedback has been amazing. It's really landed in the hands of the people I hoped and in the way that I hoped and I feel really proud of it, which is not how I usually after work I've always I'm quite self-critical. There's always things I would change or tweak or make better, but I really do feel like I did the book that I set out to do, is

speaker-0 (36:21)
reviews on Amazon are amazing so the book's called How Does Your Garden Grow and it's a beginner's guide and this is what Amazon said beginner's guidance on garden care practical advice propagating need a new word for that seasonal tasks and personal personal to you as well as personal stories in it which was goes back to your acting days yeah and people said it's a beautiful book

speaker-1 (36:43)
It's been really, really fun and rewarding hearing the feedback. And though it's a beginner's book, I mean, it's good for a beginner to be able to pick up. It's also, I mean, because I've got enough experience now to share things like propagation and do it really well. And I talk about colour from someone who's been working for over a decade.

with colour and design. feel like it's not coming from the lens of a garden designer, it's really coming from the lens of a grower and a gardener. so hopefully it's just such a practical, useful thing to be able to pick up and use for even if you've had a garden.

speaker-0 (37:17)
I I'm a really experienced flower farmer, been doing it for 15 years. And I have to tell you that when I come to do a border, completely different, I cannot do it how I normally would. I wouldn't put it in rows. And what about the colour mixes and what does it need to look like? And I mean, I'm doing one right now, a border, right? It's the hardest thing I've ever done, which is ridiculous for someone who's doing flower farming for 15 years. get it. It's...

speaker-1 (37:42)
It's like one of my favorite problems to solve as a border. Because first you've got to look at the conditions and then you've got to know what the plants are going to do. So you need to know how tall they're going to get, when they're going to flower, when they're going to leave gaps, when negative space. from the sort of lens of a designer, for me, it's the most exciting thing. It's like creating a vase of flowers that moves throughout the whole year. one thing that really helped, I think, me get good at borders and be able to think about them in an easy, not stressful way is...

my Windowsill Wednesday practice, is a project I've been doing for 10 years now, where every week I make a design with the seasonal flowers available in my growing space or in the wider landscape. And that means I have a real sense of what's in flower when, and I'm looking all the time really closely at what is doing what when. And I've also got 10 years of data, photographic data of what's doing what when. I can lean on that. I've also put...

huge table that also has a QR code in which shows you what's good, how tall it gets, what it is, what conditions it likes about all the plants that I know and use and love really well. there's over 300 plants, I think at least in the bigger QR code one. that's the book too, which hopefully will be useful. And then I've got little recipes, like easy ways to, I've got actual recipes that you can follow, but also

ways to think about when you design a border, you kind of want to think about a sort of pyramid that the bigger things you need less of and so they're at the top and then the smaller things you need much more of and they're at the bottom. each border, like a sort of standard size border, maybe like three meters by two, you'll want one small tree maybe and then three shrubs and that's sort of second down in the pyramid and then you get further down the pyramid so it's even wider.

And that's where your herbaceous perennials are. Maybe you need six to eight or nine of them. Cause if you work in odd numbers, often is nicer. then bulbs and ground cover and small tiny plants like hardy geraniums, you can have as many as you can sort of fit. you get, there's ways of thinking about it that I've distilled that I think make it much, much easier.

speaker-0 (39:55)
I mean, great, absolutely great, because from a flower farmers point of view, have to turn that head off. Because that head is, well, I need delphiniums because they're really tall and I'm going to grow them in rows and fox gloves, can grow shade, you're to have that. You don't necessarily think about color all year. And you certainly don't think about any flowers that you can't cut. So you wouldn't think about geranium because you can't cut that. So that won't be part of my border. And then you think, hold on a minute, this is where I'm going to look out. So you have to kind of switch. So actually, I think it's harder for a flower farmer to do a border than it is for me.

speaker-1 (40:24)
Definitely, but I like to think of myself as just really greedy for plants.

speaker-0 (40:31)
Yeah, definitely that.

speaker-1 (40:32)
one thing that we used to use a lot in large scale installations is living plants. So I think there's also part me that's always been used to working with living plants for a long time. So hardy geraniums in is always useful for just having in a pot and bunging to hide, at the bottom to hide the mechanics of an arch.

speaker-0 (40:51)
The sectoral pedagony is making a comeback.

speaker-1 (40:54)
are I

honestly but I honestly think they're on the way out already my trend forecasting I think we've got like a year or two left

speaker-0 (40:59)
D-

They're tender, tender, so you've to bring them in and they're to be... They're very easy to propagate. They are probably the easiest thing to propagate. What we like, we're all plants. But yeah, the book. So how did your garden grow? Where did they get it?

speaker-1 (41:15)
You

You can get it at independent book shops up and down the country if you're listening from further away. It's also out in the USA and Australia. you can get it online. If you just type it in, you'll find it.

speaker-0 (41:30)
it's fine I've seen it it's amazing you've done really really well so tell me Millie what's next obviously seeds and

speaker-1 (41:41)
Yeah, you

can follow along with what we're doing at Elmer Proust, Paris and I, online and on Instagram. And we are, yeah, we're going to really, really focus in on getting the absolute best quality seeds grown in the UK. We're going to keep sort of trying to convince you not to grow the F1s like snapdragons. We do offer a few, I think it's like four snapdragons, but the F1 means that we can't.

you know, get the exact varieties that people really love. Yeah. And we can't grow them ourselves. So weaning you guys off that. So trying to encourage, I guess I'll just keep showing what we can make and grow. Yeah. Garden-wise and vase-wise with open pollinated varieties and continue learning the best ways to harvest seed and bring you guys the best seed possible.

And the breeding program is something that we're really excited by and we're setting up the field. After I get off this chat, I've got my overalls on ready. I'm making beds and we're also growing a new, brand new experimental garden this year, which is, we built a studio. So we've been working from our kitchen tables for the last 10 years and we now have an office space. So we've built a little garden around it with this sort of

crushed building material that we didn't want to ship off elsewhere to be a brown site elsewhere. We're going to turn it into an ecological site by planting things that potentially are going to thrive in those conditions. But I'm sure we'll experience a lot of death because it feels very, very experimental.

speaker-0 (43:21)
with death because death of plants we've talked about that off camera or off call that we're okay with death because you know plants have a cycle too and you must send me the details of the book on time because I'm a bit of an addict and we both talked off camera about being rushing women and we take a lot on which we do and we both committed to reading

rushing women syndrome. So I will tell you how I get on. am, we are, we are committed. I've got you on camera committing. You were going to read it too. And the two of us are going to learn something from being rushing women.

speaker-1 (43:49)
But

think the idea is for us to continue to fill our lives with the things that we love and we're curious about, but maybe do it at a gentler pace that means that we could do it for longer.

speaker-0 (44:09)
Yeah, good luck with that one. So have you got another book in you or are you just holding that one back?

speaker-1 (44:14)
Yeah, I love writing. I've been coming up with... There's one that I really wanted to do since I maybe working with Eva in 2021 on the first one. I really... Yeah, there's one I really want to do. I don't want to say it because I don't want anyone else to steal it before you get round to it.

speaker-0 (44:35)
They can't steal your writing, Millie, I wouldn't worry.

speaker-1 (44:39)
The thing about publishing is what you learn when you're in the game for long enough is that if you do say it out loud, someone else will do it.

speaker-0 (44:47)
Don't.

Just tell us there's another book in there.

speaker-1 (44:52)
There's

at least a few. I mean, I just love the whole process. I know that some people don't enjoy it at all, but I do find sitting still all day and doing the writing days really intense. It doesn't suit me to sit still all day, but I do when I'm working outside, I'm often writing chapters and then writing notes so that it can once I sit down, I can be efficient. just love, I love the whole thing. just love, I love being able to share.

everything that I've learned and it feels like the best way to possibly do it. So the best way for me, I'm less good with the, I do try doing a bit of talking to camera, but I find it a bit hard. I prefer just putting it in a book.

speaker-0 (45:33)
know, and I find writing a book hard. I've got one in me yet. Just one. And I've got a month, wait for this, a month in Switzerland in June. Because I'm having, this sounds really glamorous, I'm having a knee operation in June in Switzerland, which sounds very glamorous. It's not glamorous. In fact, all my friends think it's great. Think it's a holiday and they're booking to come out because it's in Lugano and it'd be very lovely. So I'm doing lots and lots of mentoring when I'm away. But one thought I had was I would sit and write a book.

speaker-1 (45:58)
Yeah, lovely. think that's a good way to spend, you and I talked about this off camera too, my idea of hell is having to recover and it's hard. I mean, if you can, that for me is like the thing that stops, staves off the doom feelings.

speaker-0 (46:07)
I'm already feeling what am gonna do?

Mine's all around flower farming and how profitable it can be and how profitable it can't be.

to avoid it because there's so many more people entering the market which I love and there's lots of young people coming into it which I absolutely adore and it's like exactly

speaker-1 (46:34)
to survive and thrive. more of us the better.

To have that kind vital information is really helpful.

speaker-0 (46:41)
So that's my book. tell you know whether I've read rushing, whether I've a book by the end of June, I'll keep you posted. Brilliant, really is really nice to talk to you. Really nice. And in the show notes, we'll put the book and where people can get it. And we'll put obviously your website and all your Instagram handles and so on. And we'll let people know when this is out and it's brilliant. It's lovely to talk to you.

speaker-1 (47:05)
Lovely to talk to you too, have a lovely day.

speaker-0 (47:07)
Have a lovely

day out. We're both going out now, aren't we? All right, darling, take care. Bye bye bye.

speaker-1 (47:14)
Bye.