After a break for half term, our online demos and live chats for paid subscribers are back this week, kicking off a busy November for Georgie!

Coming up this week

Wednesday 4th November - The Ranunculus and Anemone Demo online

A chance to learn how to grow a spectacular spring crop of ranunculus and anemones for cutting - no polytunnel or greenhouse required. What you’ll learn:

• How to order ranunculus claws and anemone corms and what to look for

• How to sprout corms and claws before planting for better establishment

• The right compost and soil conditions for a healthy crop

• How to protect young plants from mice and frost

• The light, warmth, watering, and feeding requirements at each stage of growth

• How to manage your crop without a polytunnel or greenhouse

Whether you have a small cutting patch or a larger growing space, this demo will give you the confidence to grow ranunculus and anemones well - and enjoy a spring harvest that makes every effort worthwhile.

Suitable for home gardeners, cutting garden growers, and flower farmers at any level who want to add ranunculus and anemones to their spring crop.

FIND OUT MORE AND BOOK

Thursday 5th November - Club live chat

Our live chat for paid subscribers (our clubbers) returns, and we are back with a guest we are really looking forward to talking to. Join Georgie as she chats with the very talented photographer, .

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER

Coming up next week:

Monday 9th November The Christmas Garland and Wreathing Demo online

Learn how to make a stunning Christmas garland from garden-grown and foraged material, and how to transform that same garland into a handmade Christmas wreath. This is one of the most versatile and rewarding natural Christmas decoration skills you can learn.

CHRISTMAS GARLAND & WREATHING DEMO

Tuesday 10th November The Traditional Christmas Kissing Ball Demo online

Join Georgie and find out how to make a traditional kissing ball - a sustainable, lush, natural ball of foliage and mistletoe designed to hang from a ceiling or beam and bring festive magic to your home.

TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS KISSING BALL DEMO

Wednesday 11th November The Introduction To Flower Farming Workshop online

If you’ve ever dreamed of making a living growing cut flowers for sale, this full-day online workshop with flower farmer and florist Georgie Newbery is the place to start turning that dream into a realistic, workable plan. Suitable for nyone exploring the idea of turning their love of flower growing into a business, whether you have land already or are still working out what is possible, or those in the early days of flower farming.

MORE DETAILS HERE

Thursday 12th November Club live chat - Festive wreath demo

We try to offer our paid subscribers (clubbers) a live demo every term and given it’s the week of our Christmas online demos, we thought we’d continue with the theme and offer clubbers the chance to join Georgie for a festive wreath demo (which will differ to the paid demos above!) If you’ve been thinking about joining the club, this session might persuade you?

JOIN THE CLUB

Festive demo recordings from 2025

The following festive demos took place last year but we don’t have space in our timetable to repeat them this year (we’ve introduced two new demos instead). So we are making the recordings available to buy. Simply order and we will send the recording over to you as soon as we get chance.

These recordings from 2025 are available to buy until 13th December 2026.

The Christmas Tablescape Demo

The Christmas Willow Wreath Demo

The Mossed Wreath For Christmas Demo

Information for paid subscribers

We hope you can join us for the live session this Thursday at 5pm - it’s a great one to start the second half of this term with. Including this one, there are still 6 live chats to come this term. Lots to look forward to.

And don’t forget to use our discount code if booking any of the sessions above. You can find it, along with all the other discount codes Georgie has got for you, on the club perks page here. (Only accessible via a web browser, and not via the Substack app).

So why not Mull in October? It was the night before my father’s memorial service in February. The Americans had just started bombing Iran. I got an email saying a house on Mull I’d always fancied for a big holiday was available at a discounted rate for the last week of October. Reader I booked it. And here we are now, eight months later, and I’m packing my bags while two storms rage outside. The ferries to Mull on Sunday may be cancelled. Bon. We’re going. It’ll be an adventure. And this is the luggage I’m taking with me. Lots of useful, some memories, some almost talismanic bits and pieces, a few good books, some spangle. Let’s hope we get there! Enjoy.

I’m sitting outside on an island off the west coast of Scotland. It’s late October and we’ve had storms. But we’re here. And I can hear a river running down to the sea. There are pairs of squabbling jays in the road running up to the house, ravens croaking their companionable greetings as they lope across the wind. Two herons, their long legs making a balletic reach behind them, working the river as the water drops after the storm. And eagles: I know they’re eagles because they’re still enormous despite being so high they can disappear into the cloud.

I run my life in controlled fashion. I may be a flower farmer and so to some extent at the mercy of the weather, but I’m experienced enough to be able to play the vicissitudes of climate change so that I still get a crop I can sell despite everything. Running my own business as well as playing my part in maintaining family life does take a certain amount of controlled behaviour. And that can become something which is a habit so engrained that I strategise even when to unload the dishwasher in order to maximise efficient use of time.

Imagine then how good it is for me to book a holiday. Time to step away and leave the controlling behind. Obviously the holiday must be booked many months in advance in order to fit it into a pretty crammed calendar. And in doing so risks are always taken. There’s many a potential slip between a good idea and actually achieving the holiday objective. But at some point you just have to take a punt. So when I got an email saying there was a special offer on a house on Mull in October, and the email arrived the evening before my father’s memorial service, and just as our friend the other side of the pond started making war on Iran, I was in the mood to take a risk. And before the weekend was out the house was booked.

And then, other than making sure that we’d invited enough people to fill the house, I kind of forgot all about it. After all, the holiday wouldn’t take place till the end of October. Plenty of time to get organised after the summer.

It wasn’t until other members of the party started to remind one another that ferries in Scotland need booking well in advance that I started to consider that we, clever us, had saved our family summer holiday until the last week of October and were planning to take it on an island off the west coast of Scotland.

Which is where the lessons come in. As I’ve said, there is a bit of natural control freak in my nature. You might blame it on eldest daughter syndrome (I am the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter of an eldest daughter: I’m also the eldest grand daughter, the eldest girl cousin etc etc…). You might blame it on having run a business for years while also bringing up a family etc. You might just say I’m a natural at trying to hold everything efficiently together and I should take responsibility for my own behaviour and not blame outside forces for it. Whatever the reason I do like a plan to go according to plan. And I have a habit of trying to make as much activity fit in to as short a time as possible - perhaps for fear of waste. In any case, when a named storm hoves into view a few days before leaving for said holiday there is an object lesson in letting go.

I cannot control the weather. My friends are perfectly capable of getting themselves to this holiday. They are intelligent adults who chose to come with us knowing that we were booking for the end of October and that therefore there might be a bit of an added adventure getting here. It’s not my responsibility to make sure that everyone finds their arrival here perfectly easy.

Of course this didn’t stop me lying in bed worrying. This didn’t stop me obsessively watching the weather apps to see whether as if by magic the wind would drop enough for us to cross as planned.

And of course we didn’t cross as planned. There were last minute reservations at small hotels at ferries further up the highlands. And we missed our first day. But nobody minded. Everyone loved the adventure. A day late Mum and I got up at four am to drive north from her house in Cumbria. The day unfurled as we drove through Glasgow, and the familiar landmarks of the Erskine Bridge, and the bit of the road round Loch Lomond where you feel as though you’re going to slide into the water, and the roundabout past Crianlarich. The highlands dwarfed us and all our worries. We stopped for a pee at The Green Welly Stop and could do nothing about how the journeys of our friends were going. Phone reception sporadic. Wind high. The change of plan a gift. Mum’s been coming to the highlands for her holidays since just after the second world war, and for various reasons didn’t think she’d see them again since we last came this way four years ago. So the change of plan meant we drove past all her old favourite spots and down through the drama of Glen Coe, and round to the ferry at Lochaline from where we crossed at last to Mull.

Four days later I still have ‘Let it go,’ as an ear worm. It’s less annoying than you might think. Nobody here feels as though they’ve missed a day. The party has settled into groups kaleidoscoping: walkers and adventurers and explorers, and those returning from foraging trips with great sacks of seafood with which to make a feast. We are having, as a trip to the highlands always is, an adventure of a holiday. I don’t think Mum will describe herself as frail again for a while.

And that lovely thing where for a week you pretend you live another life, in another place, with different light, and the peaty smell of sphagnum moss beneath your feet, and eagles playing hide and seek with the clouds, and deer mooching, nonchalant, across the lawn.

Let it go.

A while ago, a potential retreat attendee asked us for more detail about our 3 day Lifestyle Business Retreat, beyond what was written on the website. I thought Georgie’s answer was enormously helpful - so I’ve decided to share it here.

Before I do that, I wanted to say we are always very happy to answer questions about any of our sessions. We try to reflect their content on the website, as well as highlighting who they might be suitable for, but we know that when you’re investing your money and your time into something more detail can sometimes be enormously helpful. So if you’re ever considering doing one of our sessions, either online or at the farm, and you want to find out more or check it’s suitable for you, please just ask - you can do that on here or drop us a message via our website contact form.

Join our club for a discount on demo, workshop and retreat bookings

It’s also worth me mentioning at this point that if you are considering doing any of our sessions, paid Substack subscribers receive 10% discount. So it can be well worth considering signing up as a paid subscriber and using this discount when booking a place (and then benefitting from all the other benefits of being in our club too!)

JOIN OUR CLUB

Book a 3 day session for 2027 before 20th November and pay 2026 prices

We’ve a Lifestyle Business Retreat taking place in mid November and we’ve also listed the dates for our February retreat. We will be holding the price for this and our other 3 day sessions in 2027 (Eco Floristry Retreat and Flower Farming Intensive) until 19h November, when there will be a price increase. You can book now at the 2026 price. You can also pay by instalments if you prefer. Email nicola@commonfarmflowers.com if you’d like to pay this way.

Right….back to the purpose of this newsletter!

Can you tell me more about the Lifestyle Business Retreat?

Here’s Georgie’s words, in answer to this question:

How does that sound to you?

There are still a small number of places on our November retreat if you’d like to be spontaneous and join us or the February dates are now live if you need more lead in time.

And of course if you want to ask anything else about the retreat, please do.

Meanwhile, there’s more detail on our website:

THE LIFESTYLE BUSINESS RETREAT

It’s the school half term in the UK, which means a week with no ‘live’ sessions for our clubbers (paid subscribers) and no teaching for Georgie, either online or at the farm either. But, I thought it was still worth a ‘coming up this week’ email as there are a few things to let you know and / or remind you about!

This week:

Tuesday 27th October - last chance to buy workshop recordings

The following workshops are available to buy as recordings until Tuesday this week.

The Flower Farmer’s Year Workshop

Suitable for all gardening enthusiasts and flower growers, whatever their level of experience: from first-time sowers to established growers who want a more organised and productive year. In this workshop, Georgie will walk you through the dates that will guarantee you a season full of flowers, year on year - helping you to organise yourself and your cut flower patch, while leaving time for all the other things you’d like to do with your life!

The Design A Cut Flower Patch Workshop

Learn how to plan and plant a productive cut flower patch, from a courtyard filled with pots to a multi-acre growing space, in this practical workshop. Inspiring, generous, and grounded in real experience, this workshop gives you the confidence and the clarity to start creating or evolving your cut flower patch. Suitable for all gardening enthusiasts and flower growers, whatever their level: from complete beginners planning their first cutting patch to experienced growers wanting to redesign or expand their growing space.

The Cut Flower Patch Workshop Bundle

If you’d like to order both the above workshops, you can order this discounted bundle.

Festive Demos

These take place in just 2 weeks time! We’ve 2 brand new live online demos for you to choose from, along with 3 recordings of the demos Georgie taught last year that we won’t have chance to repeat live in 2026.

Live online demos

Monday 9th November The Christmas Garland and Wreathing Demo

Tuesday 10th November The Traditional Christmas Kissing Ball Demo

Order both the above online demos in our discounted bundle - The Christmas Duo of Demos

Online demo recordings from 2025

Available to order now.

The Christmas Tablescape Demo

The Christmas Willow Wreath Demo

The Mossed Wreath For Christmas Demo

Other workshops and demos to come in November

Wednesday 4th November The Ranunculus and Anemone Demo online

Wednesday 11th November The Introduction To Flower Farming Workshop online

Tuesday 17th, Wednesday 18th, Thursday 19th November The Lifestyle Business Retreat 3 days at the farm in Somerset

Catch up time

In case you missed any of our recent posts, here are some you might like to catch up on.

October tour of the flower farm - enjoy Georgie’s tour, recorded last week, as she walks you round the farm at the end of October and chats through what jobs she needs to get done.

How this flower farmer manages her year - where are the boundaries and what makes her say, ‘No’ - a useful ‘thought’ piece from Georgie, not just for flower farmers, but for all of us as we think about the time we have available and how we want to spend it (and also how we sometimes really should say no!)

Club perks - we’ve always offered 10% discount on the Common Farm Flowers website to our paid subscribers on Substack , but we are delighted to now have 10 other small businesses on board who offer our clubbers a discount too. Find out more about the benefits of being a paid subscriber in this update, as well as view the current list of who you get a discount with if you join our club!

Advice to a 16 year old who dreams of being a flower farmer - here Georgie replies to a question she was asked by a 16 year old on a recent YouTube clip, potentially useful information for some of you to share with young people who ask similar questions (and might be useful to any of us in mid life considering a career change?)

Wellness for this old woman - another thought piece from Georgie and one that generated a lot of conversation. Join in, if you’ve not yet had chance to!

The Common Farm Flowers Index - one post linking ALL our posts since we started on Substack, listed by category. We’ll update this at the end of each month (October update to come next week!) Click a sub heading and you’ll jump down to that section of the post and can see all the posts in that category.

Information for paid subscribers (our clubbers!)

No live chat this week but the live sessions start again on Thursday 5th November and then continue through until 17th December (excluding 19th November). So 6 more live chats to come before Christmas, starting with photographer of gardens, people and food, Jason Ingram on 5th November, which is going to be a real treat!

And a reminder about your club perks! There are now 11 small businesses listed on our club perks page. If you’re thinking of ordering from any of them now or in the next few weeks, don’t forget to use our discount codes - we love to support other small businesses and also want to encourage more to join us! You can see all your perks here.

Other flower farmers are just beginning to harvest their chrysanthemums now. Yet more are planting vast successions of tulips or ranunculus or anemones.

This flower farmer knows that there are only 365 days in a year of which she plans to work no more than 250. There are 104 days of weekends, 8 days of bank holiday, and then any business person will burn out if they don’t take a break from time to time. So 25 days holiday is reasonable. That’s 137 days. 365 days in a year less 137 leaves 228 days to work. Now I don’t mind doing a bit of flower farming work at weekends and will often sneak a trip of one kind of another in return during the week. There’s the balance.

I’ve been talking a lot recently to my students about making a balanced year. You can take the way you earn your income and actively fit it to a year. If it doesn’t fit - eg you don’t have sales and marketing time as well as growing time - then you need to work out what will fit and whether it will make you enough turnover, less associated costs, to pay you the living you’ve worked out will be enough for you. Simple.

So here we are at Common Farm Flowers in Somerset. We’re making the most of the time we have, spending £££ only where necessary. The game of seedling tetris we play is as busy as ever. There are no chrysanthemums. The dried material is all sold out. A sneaky trip to London for a fundraiser for my friend’s foundation in memory of her daughter is in view. The Yasmin Tarn Foundation. This an opportunity to catch up with old friends, raise some funds, and take the opportunity on the way to do some work for Flowers from the Farm of which I am External Chair.

The juggle is real, and never dull. And decisions have to be made again and again and again to keep us focused on our core business, making the livelihood we need, enough to pay our way and allow us to continue doing what we do.

Enjoy!

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We practise a business philosophy which we call Enoughism here at Common Farm Flowers. This offers us a system which helps us both make enough money to live on, but also allows us to stop, to say ‘No,’ which helps us avoid burnout.

Like many people running small businesses doing something other people (and us too to be fair) consider ‘lovely,’ we live with a certain amount of guilt. Aren’t we lucky to work for ourselves? Aren’t we lucky to spend our time outside with the flowers? Aren’t we lucky to be able to make a living being creative? And of course we are. But that isn’t sustainable if we allow that guilt to make us a) charge too little for our work (because who are we to charge the correct amount for something so lovely when we’ve had such a lovely time growing and curating and creating these lovely things?) and b) feel obliged to help every potential client that comes along with whatever it is they are asking of us (you can’t please all the people all of the time is a very good adage to remember.)

So how do we work out what we will and won’t do here at Common Farm Flowers in Somerset?

Simple.

Read more

We need to talk about Christmas!

We schedule our festive demos in early November to give you all plenty of time before Christmas to practice your new skills, or to source your ingredients, or perhaps so you can start making items to sell.

What this means though is:

1. All of a sudden Georgie and I look at each other in mid to late October and say “These demos are happening REALLY soon!” (which is exactly what happened on Monday this week when we were having a catch up)

2. We therefore need to mention the festive demos to you now, with no further delay!

So apologies if it feels far too soon but we don’t want you to miss out. We’ve two fabulous and BRAND NEW online demos on offer this year. Alongside these, we are offering you the chance to buy the recordings of our 3 festive demos from 2025 if you missed out and were hoping to do these this year.

Our festive demos are all suitable for complete beginners or those wanting to refine their sustainable festive decoration techniques.

As ever, we always record our online demos so if you can’t join live you can watch the recording back in your own time and as often as you like.

Here’s what’s on offer….

SEE ALL OUR FESTIVE DEMOS

BRAND NEW ONLINE DEMOS

Monday 9th November 5pm

The Christmas Garland and Wreathing Demo

In this demo, Georgie teaches you how to make a stunning Christmas garland from garden-grown and foraged material, and how to transform that same garland into a handmade Christmas wreath. This is one of the most versatile and rewarding natural Christmas decoration skills you can learn.

What you’ll learn:

• What to harvest for Christmas garlanding and when, so your material is fresh and full of life.

• Step-by-step Christmas garland making techniques so your finished garland looks abundant and lasts well.

• How to hang a Christmas garland so it sits beautifully and stays secure.

• How to make a Christmas wreath from your garlanding - one skill, two show-stopping results.

• Top tips for keeping natural Christmas decorations fresh and fragrant throughout the festive season.

If you have ever wondered how to make a natural Christmas wreath or garland at home, this is the demonstration for you.

BOOK HERE

Tuesday 10th November

The Traditional Christmas Kissing Ball Demo

In this demo, Georgie teaches you how to make a traditional kissing ball - a sustainable, lush, natural ball of foliage and mistletoe designed to hang from a ceiling or beam and bring festive magic to your home.

What you’ll learn:

• Which foliage and greenery to gather and prepare for your kissing ball.

• Step-by-step techniques for building a full, beautiful foliage ball that holds its shape.

• How to hang your kissing ball so it becomes an instant focal point in any room.

• How to incorporate mistletoe, the plant at the heart of this old tradition.

• Tips for keeping your kissing ball looking fresh throughout the Christmas season.

The kissing ball is one of Britain’s oldest Christmas traditions, predating the Christmas tree, and there is something romantic and seasonal about reviving it in your own home.

BOOK HERE

You can order both the above demos in a discounted bundle here:

THE CHRISTMAS DUO OF DEMOS

FESTIVE DEMO RECORDINGS FROM 2025

The recordings from these 2025 festive demos are all available to buy until 13th December.

The Christmas Willow Wreath Demo

Having made willow wreaths for years, Georgie has refined the skills you need to turn long stems of willow into a magical circle. Georgie uses willow from her flower farm, but you can use willow, or any good bendy sticks you can forage from your own growing space. Once the circle is made Georgie shows you how to make a garland which will turn your wreath into a Christmas decoration.

ORDER HERE

The Christmas Tablescape Demo

With lots of twiggery pokery, seasonal foliage, dried flowers and seasonal fresh flowers, Georgie gives you all kinds of clever ideas and know-how so that your Christmas table will have real wow-factor.

ORDER HERE

The Mossed Wreath For Christmas Demo

Let Georgie show you how you can source and forage material from your own garden, which then, step by step, are used to form a twig base, before the base is then mossed. Using no wire, Georgie then shows you how to bind in a glorious mix of stems she will cut on the day the demo was filmed from her own garden, inspiring you to go and forage from yours.

ORDER HERE

It’s time for a reminder of all the goodies that come with being a paid subscriber of the Common Farm Flowers Substack (the people we affectionately call our clubbers).

In particular, we want to share news about our club perks, which are a fairly new offering for our clubbers but one we are incredibly proud to be able to offer.

This feels like a timely …

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So this version of the clip is for you Clubbers, and I wonder if you’ll find it interesting - especially the part at the end where I talk to you about how you can help young people into horticulture too - if you can…

Enjoy!

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However, there is much to look forward to in November - including two brand new Christmas dem…

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Georgie’s official flower season might have ended, but she is as busy as ever this week (and the list below are the things I know about - there will be many other tasks I am unaware of!)

Today, Georgie as her last consultancy session of the year - a 3 hour visit by a student to the farm (also available to do online) in what I’m sure will be a transforma…

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I remember the ‘Oh, it’s a lifestyle business,’ comment, with the slightly patronising little moue from my friend Ian when I said I was going to grow cut flowers for sale sixteen years ago. I was deeply offended at the time. Lifestyle business? Lifestyle business! What did he mean? I inte…

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Some questions for you

Are you a small business founder? Or are you currently dreaming of what your small business could be?

Would you like to step a…

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Here’s our weekly look at what’s coming up in the very near future - ways you can join in with what Georgie is up to and learn from her vast experience! If you’re new to the Substack page - hello and welcome. We’ve written a post to help you find your way around but please always ask questions if you want to know more about…

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Ten minutes of exclusive extra tips for you Clubbers. And have some fun today creating something beautiful for your own pleasure if you have time. You won’t regret it.

Enjoy x

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It happens from time to time. I hear from students or club members of mine that other flower farmers look down upon them, give them reasons to step away from flower farming, and generally make them feel as if their flower farming venture, be it ever so new, or even old established, is somehow less valid than that of the person who has set themselves up as judge.

So I thought I’d put together a piece about what makes a ‘real’ flower farmer, and while we’re at it, I’ll consider the parameters within which a flower farmer can consider themselves successful. For it is, of course, nobody else’s business whether your flower farming venture is ‘right,’ or ‘correct,’ or meets some standards which, let’s face it, are those of the judger. The judger usually knows little about the business of the judgee, they’re just judging.

And I will protect my students and my club members strongly. I would remind all more established, and perhaps those allowing themselves to be a bit judgemental, that we all started somewhere, and when we did we knew very little compared to what we do today. Flower farming, as with founding any business, involves a steep learning curve. Not only that, let’s remember that markets change, businesses evolve, and what worked last year may not this, no matter how many years we’ve been selling flowers we’ve grown to our neighbours, the nearby town, shipping them off to markets further afield and so on.

So what makes a good flower farmer?

Is it horticultural expertise? Will you be a better flower farmer if you have your RHS level 2 or 3? Well, you’ll hopefully know what you’re doing around plants. But, being a fully trained horticulturalist, will you be prepared to work at the speed a flower farmer needs? You may need to cut corners, to use your initiative, to prove a system works better for you if you carry it out in a way you weren’t taught. Horticultural qualifications are valuable, no doubt. Practical experience is also going to transform your ability to grow cut flowers for sale efficiently, growing height and quality in ways that your horticultural teaching may not have covered. For example: it is often taught that some annuals do well in poor soil. Which may be the case if they are going to be raked in as seed into a gravelly patch in an old yard, for example, and there left to grow, flower, set seed etc over years as a decorative part of a larger planting scheme (for an excellent example of this, do look up Yews Farm in Martock where Louise Dowding has created a garden which includes in high summer swathes of self-sown Ammi majus in the rough ground of the old yard. I would posit that if she were growing this Ammi to perform as a cut flower she might plant it somewhere richer, in order to achieve a greater number of cut and come again plates of lace cap flowers.) Horticultural qualifications are useful, but everyone needs to take what they want to do with plants and think twice before copying exactly what they were taught: because what they were taught may not have been taking into account their particular circumstances, or the way they wish the plant to perform.

So no, horticultural qualifications do not make you a great flower farmer. You can learn on the job. You will need to learn fast. But you don’t need to have horticultural qualifications to be a good flower farmer (I speak as one who knows.) Therefore, if anyone says to you that you can’t be a flower farmer unless you have your RHS level 2 they are not telling the truth. You won’t have much fun as a flower farmer unless you learn a good deal about what you can grow in sufficient quantity to be able to sell it at a price point which will pay your way - a subject not taught in a RHS horticulture module focussed on ornamental gardens.

MY FLOWER FARMING WORKSHOPS

Now for the person who says you can’t be a flower farmer because your plot is too small. Here at Common Farm Flowers we grow on 1,000 metres of metre wide beds. If we put all those beds together they would fill a quarter of an acre. A quarter of an acre is the size of one and a half tennis courts. So, bigger than your average domestic garden for sure, but only a quarter of an acre. Double the size and you could comfortably grow what we do here at Common Farm Flowers which is about 50,000 stems for cutting through a year - intense harvest April through September, and then chunks of foliage and willow for Christmas - in that space. When I say double the size I say so because you then have room for paths through the beds, a processing shed, a greenhouse. I know people successfully growing cut flowers for sale on allotments, in back gardens, in one case a colleague grows a flower farm in raised beds on a third of an acre of bedrock outside her back door.

You may want to expand, find more land. But you are wise to start small, learn, and take on more land when you have personal capacity and the confidence you can make the time and motion study you’ve been working on in your smaller space scale to fit more land. The person growing on more land, or growing more varieties, or generally trying to be more things to more people, may be very busy, but that doesn’t mean they’re earning any more than you are. They may not be good at that time and motion study, they may employ lots of people who cost them a fortune in taxes, somewhere warm to sit and eat lunch, they may spend good turnover hiring a lavatory at the field so that those staff can take a pee in private when they need to. They may work all hours and take home less pay than you.

This is what I think.

Busy doesn’t make you a successful flower farmer: busy can just make you tired. If you’re going to be busy you’d better make sure the occupation’s interesting or you’ll lose sight of your why.

Large doesn’t make you successful. Scaled up flower farms risk being costlier to run than smaller. A more modest operation may cost much less to run and potentially leave the founder with a better income than something larger.

Highly qualified doesn’t mean you’ll have the energy you need to get out of bed and harvest early in the summer, sow seeds and split perennials and plant bulbs in autumn, mulch beds and prune and plant bare roots in winter, sow more seeds and more and more in a regular succession through spring and summer. Highly qualified might mean you feel more overwhelmed by what you’re supposed to do to do it ‘properly’ when really you just need to get on.

Being large, or busy, or highly qualified doesn’t mean you know anything about or have the discipline to run a successful business. Being large, or busy, or highly qualified doesn’t make you a good marketeer - or a good flower farmer.

So what do I think makes a good flower farmer?

I think a person with a strong reason for taking up flower farming will find it easy to get up each morning and do it all again.

A person who knows how much they need to earn in order to have enough to pay for their life is in a position to work on a cashflow forecast that will use those time and motion studies to work out how much product they can produce, in how much time, charged at what price, less the cost of doing all the above, to make that enough. A person who carves out time from the fun part of growing and harvesting and floristrying to make sure their website is up to date, their marketing plan is always sufficiently ahead of their cashflow forecast. A person who does their admin before they get out in the field, invoices before they sow more seed. A person who plays their year planner and their cash flow forecast and their marketing plan like a conductor with a chamber group. That person can be a good flower farmer. That person can learn more about the skills needed to grow better all the time, they can expand or contract their offering according to their enough. That person is able to say ‘no’ because they know what their enough is. That person is running their business according to principles they have worked out to suit their own particular circumstances. These are things that make a good flower farmer.

So those who find themselves judging what other flower farmers are doing: beware. You have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. You are unlikely to know the ‘Why’ behind a business. You certainly won’t have access to the bank account. We all started somewhere, on modest patches of land. We all learned fast what worked for us, or not. Many of us pivot from time to time: while still growing flowers for sale we may do more wholesale, we may step away from floristry, we may love the fun it is to teach others and share skills, or turn some of our space over to pick your own because we love the people who come to cut our flowers. A business which evolves is not a failure: it’s evolving according to the why of the business owner. Sometimes people have family commitments which require a shrinking of an operation. Sometimes people achieve that bigger field they’ve been dreaming of for years and you find they are not at all the kind of flower farmer they were last year. People specialise, become specialists, they grow flowers as a side hustle, as a way to use land which is too small to use as a dairy farm, and too big to keep as a garden (me!)

No two flower farmers have the same why. No two flower farmers have the same financial security. We bring to the industry different ages, skillsets, backgrounds, strengths. Let us celebrate the many ways we grow flowers for sale, while remembering that the value to the environment of any sustainably growing flower farm, no matter its why, is likely greater than its economic contribution to both owner’s pocket book and local economy.

Recently I heard a colleague describe me with a sort of sharp smile as, ‘Well, you’re more of a content creator now, aren’t you.’ And I could have reacted. But that would have ruined the mood, and to be honest, I don’t really care what she thinks. I know what I do. I know what I grow. I don’t feel judged for the size of my plot or the varieties I grow. Because I have a very strong why, a cashflow forecast I’m working hard to beat, customers I like, a field that astonishes me with its generosity every day of the year. I have no qualifications, but I’m a successful flower farmer because I’ve learned and learned and learned and I’m still learning about plants. I’ve learned and learned and learned about floristry, and I’m still learning every day. I’m good at my job because I teach it, which makes me analyse carefully the hows and whys of making a living growing cut flowers for sale. And I write books because I have words pouring out of my head, as you can see here, and if I don’t let them out I’ll go mad. And I create content to help sell it all. I have no marketing qualifications either: but if I don’t sell what I grow then I can’t carry on growing it. So yes, to an extent, content creator I have become.

Fellow flower farmers, let us celebrate one another. If we see someone who could do with a hand, then help. Never indulge in sharp put downs: often people look stronger on the outside than they might be inside, and your sharp remark might stop a person growing cut flowers at all. The industry is not yours. Your way of flower farming is not the only way. We need more flower farmers. We do not grow enough to supply all the demand. Remember you started once, you had no idea what you were doing once, and you’ve built a business that suits you, on your terms. Let others find what suits them, on their terms. Let us admire one another for our resilience, for our pushing on despite the threat of El Nino, drought, government policy, or any other potentially apocalyptic event. Our flowers, whether few or many, feed our invertebrates as well as our pocket books. Our sustainably growing businesses, modest or turning over millions, have a value to the planet greater than that to the economy. We are brilliant, we are giving back to the earth more than we take from her. Let us be kind to one another, lift one another up, and judge not.

And if your neighbour is massively undercharging do talk to them about pricing, share that they might find they’re losing money and their customers won’t like it when they put their prices up. Remind them that they need to include all their costs and so on. You can be friendly doing this and it will help.

The all new edition of The Flower Farmer’s Year is available to order from all good bookshops and online.