Floral Media More Than Just Flowers with Steve and Paula

If you're someone who has a pressure for cut flowers, our environment and wants to make the world more beautiful, you're in the right place. Whether you're growing flowers for pleasure or profit, I'm on a mission to empower flower enthusiasts and professionals to help change the world around me. Whether you're just starting out and needing help in hand or looking to scale a substantial flower business, I'm your cut flower woman. Welcome to the Cut Flower Pods. So welcome to another edition of the Cut Flower Pods and today I have two guests with me, which is an industry. We're going to have a trio. So I'd like to introduce you to Steve and Paula and perhaps you just want to kick off and tell us about your business and what you do. Hi, Ross. Well, thank you for asking us and thank you for putting up with both of us for a start. That's amazing. That's if I can get a word in it. I just know you will. Our business, floral media, we do lots of things really to make our business work. Our heart is in horticulture, I would say. Would you agree with that? Yeah, definitely. I'd like to try to watch the horticulture. And we also do events, so garden groups come on visits and we take them on tours. So we've run about 15 acres in total now. So part of it's garden and part of it's for growing. So we do like little garden tours. I do workshops and I also do lots of other things, competitive stuff with the floral art and the floral street. And Steve? Well, I do everything else. So I'm the grower and that's particularly become a large part of our business in the last two years. And I actually cook a lot of the food for the events because I'm talking from a farming background as well. So we do all sorts of, let's say, not one thing is our business. It's a lot of things and all add up to a great thing. That's it. We've been flower farming and florists and we've kind of got to diversify to make this work. You've got to do a bit of everything. We kind of work that out, don't we? That it isn't just growing or isn't just floristry or isn't just workshops or it isn't just radio. I know you're on radio, Paul, and we can talk about that in a minute. But it's all of that added together makes the success. Yeah, we love it. It is our passion of horticulture and growing is at our heart of everything we do. And we're just trying to sustain a good, reasonable living and a nice life that tours the balance is the key. Yeah, getting the balance right. That's hard. It's. I mean, we're 30. I love the chariot clip, that one. I've been 30 two years in of working together. We've been married 30, haven't we? Yeah. And we're on, I don't want to put anybody off, but we are only just getting the balance. And sometimes it doesn't come till you're a little bit older. Or wiser. Oh, why? And wiser. And you've made all your mistakes because you're not normal if you don't make mistakes. You know, I know they can be expensive, can't they? We've been there. We've done it. And there's still, I mean, Stephen will tell you about all the things that happen on the germination side, you know, and sometimes it's not your fault. No. It's just something that the rabbits eat it or leave a gate open and something gets in. Or a batch of seed or damping off, you know, the environment's not quite right. The weather is the biggest challenge, I would say. Yes. And more so now than ever. I mean, the recent frost and I mean, we lost all our pitties for them. And I don't know if our eucalyptus will come back. You know, we've actually fared better than the cylinders, if you like. So we're in Midlands and we seem to have done OK frostwires. And I watch the, I look at them while it's on social media, I think, cracking. They've had it bad and they normally don't get any, you know. I think the daily thing was a big shock to us. How many people have lost their daily achievers this year? But we've done a term where we've got through all right. Yes. No, we lost their last floor. I would say, I think for us, we got them in fairly early this time. And the big thing I did, because we're on heavy clays, is wash them properly. The pressure wash them. Yeah, gently wash them. So they seem to have done really well. Yeah. And then storing them so they've got lots of air around them, not just stacking up in a dark space and forgetting about them for a while. They were in the glasshouse, which is quite airy anyway, in crates that have got airflow, you know, can get through the crates. And yeah, they were OK. They came through OK. I think, yeah. I mean, the mistakes you can make, like you say, the germination, the pests, the animals, the weather, the irrigation, the, once you've got all that, and then obviously, yeah, I mean, it's almost everything that can go wrong. Actually, all of it is out of your control or most of it is out of your control. That's the thing. That's actually, that's one thing we love about it is actually something in our life. Every day. You've got to work out of your risk base, I think, at the end of the day. You just depend on what type of person you are. You know, sometimes you just got to go with it. And you've got to have planned out, but to have planned risk, I suppose, is maybe, maybe occasionally you've got to step out there and just do something new and challenge. I say that to people. Yeah, some of the people on my courses, they'll say, what's the germination rate? OK, well, let's call it 80%. And some see this 15. It depends on the seed and how viable it is. And how many plants will I get then? Ask. Well, then, well, OK, well, how many can I then plant in a square metre? OK. And how far do I plant? How far? Just do it. Because if it doesn't work, get another packet, see if you can do it again. Because it's the cost of the seed. It's kind of like to do it again. It's something else you know you can grow. But the compost is the big key there, I think, isn't it? With your seed serene, I think. Oh, yeah. The compost we've been using this year has really made a difference. Not a huge success rate issue. Less damp enough with it as well, which is really good. I spoke to on my podcast a person called Michael Kennard. He runs the compost club in Brighton. And he does it all. It was really, really interesting. And I came across him in Instagram. He runs a social enterprise, he runs community projects. And honestly, by the time I spoke into it for an hour, I was feeling really like, oh, my goodness, what else can I do? But he composts food waste. And he goes and collects it the whole of Brighton. And he produces it. And he's shown experiments of how he did it with Amaranthus, how it was so much better in this food waste than any compost. And I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. And he's just using it in big, big bins, big tins and, you know, then it hit hot. So because my thought would be, well, what about the vermin? You know, obviously, if you've got food waste, what's not vermin? But of course, it's all quite enclosed. So there's this whole thing, isn't there, about the soil and the earth and the microbes. And I haven't looked at his experiment. I thought, oh, my goodness, this is something I need to think about. Yeah. And actually, I'm using some one-year-old compost I actually bought last year. And it seemed better even after a year. It's obviously commercial compost, but it seemed better after a year even. And absolutely, it was if it settled itself down. And you know, with all the P3, however, it still experiments a little bit evenly produced with some of the compost. Yeah. I think we found one that suits you and guests stick with it. Yeah. I mean, I'm fed up with fungus next coming out of the compost. So fed up with them. It's like, so I think I'll be experimenting a bit more with different medium this year, but I can't fancy that hot composter. Yeah, it's a great success with that to me. Well, hot comp, yeah. That's different. He's using, we do use a bit of a system like that. You ship water speed it up to the plate. Yeah. And we put a top ball in over the actual compost heap. So it's sort of semi-heart, so we keep the heat in the best we can. And turn it every 10 days, three weeks, isn't it? Yeah. No, two hours. That's what you've got to do. Yeah. You forget I forget to turn it. I want one of those bins that does it automatically on the app on the phone. Turn the bin, turn the bin. So tell us about your journey and how you came to today. So you've obviously been, you worked together. I could not, I mean, perhaps I can work with my husband. It was when we first met, he had his own business and I didn't. And we used to sit around this little table in the flat and do the back returns and it lasted about 15 minutes of us. You don't do it like that. You put it in the wrong column. And if you're going to do it like that, well, we're not going to do it then. No, we're not going to do it. But we've run our own businesses now and they're very different. And we only coincide because here's a construction business. We coincide because he's got the tractors and the diggers and he likes playing on the toys. But if I want him to do something, I say, oh, I want him to talk possible. You could do the digging up with the trenches with the juleps. No problem because that's getting on the digger. So he'll do the light heavy work and I'll get his lads involved in moving some stuff around, but not anything more. I certainly won't get lost in his office. Well, we don't work side-by-side and we do disagree quite a lot if we are in the same space for too long. You may have noticed we do have our separate sort of roles within the business. I'd say we're not like roles. But we are managed to make it work. So yeah, I'm probably the machine man. Oh, definitely. If you can't do it with a machine, you're not doing it. I'm the digger with the spades. Yeah. I do the weeding and the looking after the borders. The most important thing is the finesse. Definitely. So even in our food, when we're serving people food, we'll all make sure the plate looks pretty. And that's the skill we've got between us. So we're, so you did you ask us where we started from? And so I'll tell you my background. I'm from the farmers. And I was on the farm from the age of six or seven doing things, feeding calves, etc. Growing crops, so we were mixed farm. And I went to college, studied agriculture, scumbrian, HND, and met Paula. But in the meantime, I put some polytols up at home. Just it was a rented farm. So it was going to be difficult for me to stay there. So I put these polytols up as a bit of enterprise and growing salads for some strange reason. And to realise what Paula came down after to come look at my polytols. That was this chat of mine. And she came down and we were married a year later. So we were, what? So what do you tell me? You just married me from a hauteck knowledge. Well you tell your background. So where it went from there. Oh well my background, I just fell in love with agriculture from being a Saturday girl of all things in a local plant nursery. And that's how it began. My parents were a little bit disgruntled on that because at horticulture, especially at that time, just didn't have the, you know, it wasn't good enough for anybody that had lots of exam results and was capable of other things. So it wasn't seen as a brilliant future career to go into. So I had to battle with that, to be honest. Eventually got my parents to let me go to the college, the agricultural college near York. And I just studied amenity horticulture. So not even on a commercial basis, but I gained a lot of plant knowledge and I learned a lot about how plants grow and how to garden, like the basic horticultural skills, you know, a lot of botany and things like that. And I just love the actual gardening and we have grown in time into the commercially, you know, producing the cut flowers and the plants as we, as we've progressed together, the two of us together, you've got the kind of soil knowledge as well, haven't you, Steven? Yeah. So from, let's just quickly go through how, what we did. So we had the farm, poor, okay, we started growing bad in plants basically, something that we could turn over pretty quick. Then we opened a little bit to the public and we actually stood street markets. So we built them to about seven a week. That's no mean feat. That was when you had to kill at seven o'clock and wait for a stall. That's sort of different now, but those were the days. So we had skin like leather. And that was our main, that was what made us for a start. And the landlord's got edgy on the farm because we were starting to expand a little bit. So we actually moved out and found a nursery to rent in a place called Newsterd Abbey, which was far miles away from where we were. That was an old Heather growing nursery. So we actually didn't grow Heather's own wall. We grew our broad range of plants. It was far makers inside. So it was a big place. There was a fair bit of polytron space there. We put up some glass. It was, we used the mining scheme. So the mining, all the pits were closing down. So we had a couple of effects, miners working with us and things like that. So we started to supply shops and our own markets and that type of thing. And eventually we actually needed somewhere to live. So we actually had a garden centre that was for sale. It was a pretty much bankrupt called Jack'sdale Garden Centre. And that had a house on it. It was five acres. So we moved everything from the rented site to our own place. And we made it into a commodity customers there. And it was a ground force era. If you remember Charlie Demok and Alatech Marx. Yeah. Changing everything, paint everything blue. Bollywood blue I think. And we rode that seven year boom. And this garden centre just went absolutely crazy. We talked about risk earlier. That wasn't big risk. We had nothing to lose though. It didn't matter. We were at the front end of our life. You know, we lost. We lost. It wasn't really. No. I think we borrowed money at 12%. Yeah, 12%. And it was an interest rate at 15. But we won't talk about that. It just went. And we got a fantastic bank manager. And he was just key to everything. And it just worked really, really well. Off we went. And seven years later we moved where we are. Because we did manage to get management structure in. And that's often the key with a lot of businesses. We're a bit like that now. So we got management structure in and we moved out to where we are, where we currently live. And we actually managed to sell it a year later. We didn't know we planned to. But we did. And that set us up for what we're doing now. So you explained in the next bit. So yeah, we came here and I just said, don't bring any top polytunnels. I've seen some polytunnels. So it was long before the polytunnels were erected again. But the plan was for me, I always wanted to open the national garden scheme. And I wanted to train as a florist too. So I'd not had that training to become a florist. I'd been, you know, autoculturally trained. So I went and did, I didn't want to go back to college. So I did a one to one. I found a lady that could give me that one to one experience. And I specialised in wedding flowers. And then I just did like a crash course in that. I've got my own flair anyway. And I've always been fairly artistic and done flowers for family and friends. So I did that and then put myself out there as a florist as well. I'd just set up a little workshop at home. And then I found NAFAS, so the National Association of Flowering. Yes, I did. And I trained and did my level two in the NAFAS and then became an area demonstrator for the North Midlands. That was quite a scary experience going through all that. But I love being an area demonstrator. It takes me out at least once, twice a week to different flower clubs. And because of that, we can often turn that my demonstration into a visit here. So they'll come on a visit. So it's about always about the bigger picture in business, I think. You might think you work in the nothing at one point, but that could lead to something in the future. So it's all about the future, thinking about things that could possibly come on the back of something else. So, yeah, so I enjoy that. And then I do competitive stuff entering her much else of this year. I'm so yeah. Competing her much else of this year. Did it back in 2019 with my colleague, we're doing a big structure again this time. Really looking forward to that. And then Harrogate Show is coming up and I've just started thinking about my entries for that. I really love that side of things because it makes you think out of the box. And it's that creativity side of it. And the one thing I'm really enjoying at the moment is using our own homegrown produce. You know, all the stems are virtually out of our garden and what we've got growing in the polytunnels or in the field. For our design now, I design it with our flowers in mind. And I love to use plant material because I understand the conditioning and which when we came to the garden 20 years ago, it was all planted and designed around flower engines. So all the shrubs were planted with a view from me cutting it for foliage. Yeah. But we wish planted a hundred times more. I know. It's talked to me about foliage that would always be my number one recommendation. So I'm going to grow some cut flowers. No, you're going to grow some foliage. Yes. So foliage first is going to take years before you can cut it and then add everything else in the top of one person. Anyone had said to me, you know, 30% of your land should be planted. Yeah, because you use far more foliage than you realize in any sort of work that you're doing. You always put some and then I end up running out and getting some more. Yeah. So in terms of how we progress the growing side, that's we've always grown. It's never we've never not grown plants. And so we've always grown them in one way, one for one or other. We did grow cut flowers when we were on the old farm. Didn't do during the garden center period, but then started up again here. So we just gently did it. But COVID hit and that changed our mindset entirely. We were doing weddings and all sorts here. So we were hosting weddings as well. We decided to just change all that. We didn't need it anymore. So that's what we did. And we actually started trialing more commercially on the cut flower side, but we were only five acres in size then. And during COVID, 10 acres of land cave available next door. And we've bought it. And then off we go, but it's heavy, we've got the mall red clay, which is a challenge. And some people think we are crazy. And some of it's wet through, but that's now got a willow hole on it. So there you go. And we've planted two acres of wood in our wooden scoob. There you go. That's done. And the rest of it is slowly becoming a flower area. And we should try to share it with nature. So they have that bit and we can have our bit. Yeah, but we had to use the no dig system, like Charles, Douding, you know, and that's working for us. So we're able to access a lot of the municipal waste compost to build the bed up. And you know, we're busy at the minute, relaying the forest park paths in between the beds, ready for the season. I mean, at this time of year, it's so, you know, it's just full of the glasshouses, false demons, germinating left, right and center. And outside on a dry each day, we're struggling at the minute to get on the land where we're, you know, getting the beds ready for planting. Oh, that's kind of past for some politics on recently. So we're putting about quarter of an acre of politics as well. Yeah. So that'll extend our season brilliantly, you know, we can get cassants in there on the cover later on, extend maybe to Christmas cutting. And then early early on in the spring, we can get the reluculus and the anonymous ready a bit sooner, hopefully, but we're just cropping an enemies now. Yeah. Yeah. Overall, we're probably not scared of the scale. And I think that's what some people will struggle to. It doesn't phase us at all because we've done, we've been a good size before. And I think that will be the big problem for a lot of people. They just can't scale up enough or quick enough. And, you know, you'll have an order and we can do 400 stems of something, whereas a lot of people are probably only 50 available. So that's the, we're planning to sort of have that volume. Yeah. Because our aim is to supply the local florists that want to use British stems. And there is, there is no, I mean, we're on the border of Lincolnshire here. So we've got all the big growers out there, but those guys are supplying the supermarkets. Yeah. Also, we can do a little bit more bespoke. Yes. You know, we don't have to grow there. They're good at sweet Williams. They've got a gladiolike. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They grow one crust off there. They grow one of the different stuff. And I think one of the best things we did was get all the florists here and before Christmas. And we had a good morning chatting about what sort of thing they would like us to grow. You know, and they told us certain varieties and certain colours that we hadn't grown before. So we gained a lot of knowledge from, you know, just talking to the other florists about, you know, what they used because it surprised in how different all the florists are. You know, we've all got the different styles and way and colour themes that they like, palettes that they want to work in. So we've tried to please a selection of those florists and we've gone out of our comfort zone this year and try, we're growing different things. So I'm looking forward to seeing it. We also wanted to know, you've got to decide where your ethos is as well. I think being extreme is difficult. So we've got being fully organic or being totally chemical reliant and not correct. It doesn't work anymore. And so you've got to sort of meet part way with your customers as well and realise where you're marketing yourself, where you sit, where you're comfortably sitting, more than you're doing. And you have to realise that there are, you can't do everything and you can't meet everybody's demands entirely. So sustainability is the big thing. Yeah, we're trying to be sustainable, but we're trying to be compassionate with the climber and what we're doing. It doesn't always work, but if we balance it with something else, that's how we try and deal with it and ahead, something like that. Stay with us. We'll be right back. I'm excited to let you know about two amazing free events coming up soon. And the links to these are in the show notes. The first one is the 17th to 18th of April, two evenings at eight o'clock GMT. And this is all about growing plants for free. And who wouldn't want to do that? It's our annual three two part master classes on propagation, planning and potting on. Don't miss it. The link for this is go.fieldgateflowers.co.uk forward slash plants for free. Go.fieldgateflowers slash plants for free. I look forward to seeing you there. The second one is the 24th of April at eight o'clock GMT. And here is all about why grow cut flowers. Who cares? Why grow cut flowers? I'll be joined by a team of experts this evening, David Beck, who comes from Coventry, is a professor at Coventry University, and Dave Goldstone, who's an author and academic. Don't miss it. Why cut flowers? And the link for that is go.fieldgateflowers forward slash plants for free. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, the thing about florist is that what they don't want to do is to go to 10 different farms and buy 10 kiln flowers there and four tulips over here. And I can get the foliage over there because they don't have one in here. And then they're taking the day to tour the whole of Lincolnshire to do what they wanted. But actually, if they have that choice to spend a day doing that or they have the choice to sit on the computer and order from the Dutch, what are they going to do? They're going to order from the Dutch because it arrives at their door and they know what they're getting and it's all priced and they add it to their basket and the job is done. And until we can kind of do that system and make it easier for the florist and go, okay, here's your list of all of our availability this week. And we're selling it in lots of tens, what do you want? And you have enough volume to be able to do that or you're collaborating with other people to make sure you have enough volume to do that. It's the collaboration that we need. Yeah, it's where we need an alzmere here, then we've almost bought, which we saw there's been a little bit of some vauxions here and there. But yeah, it's difficult. The Dutch are so good and always have been so good at cooperating with each other. And they do have growers that grow the way they do specialise. So there's probably groups of cooperatives that say, right, you've got to be able to grow that, you grow that, you grow that, and then that's what they do. And off they go and they support each other. And I think the government's been pretty good in supporting growers as well along the way. But then the Dutch are having huge problems, so as we are now with energy and all sorts of rising costs. So that's why it's sort of giving us a more of a way in at the minute because it's more viable to grow crops in this country again. And let's hope we can get there. We need someone, how are you fixed, Rosie? You could be the hub provider, the hub maker. If you need region or not. It is a my agenda. Region or not, is the only way. They do it in the states. I went to the states to look at the model. They do it really well. I've talked to them about it. They've got white labelling models that you can actually just purchase and move over. Yes. It can work, but people need to have that. Well, I've seen it in the farming world a lot. There are a lot more cooperation, but farmers aren't that good, British farmers aren't. That cooperated, unfortunately. We've got a local system that all farms work together and it sort of works to some degree. Then somebody dies or something and then it's sort of all the dynamics change. So yeah, we need some, we need a real figurehead to drive it. You do it. And you need buying power. We all need buying power together. So that's interesting. We should be able to buy all of our resources together. So that would, I mean, I was a board director of an agricultural buying group up in Lincoln Chair, in fact, in Lath, Wardemarch. And they had a thousand members and still have a thousand members and they are cooperative. So they'll buy things like energy or chemicals or fuel or such things. And they don't know the price of it, but they'll buy it because they know that the buying group will get them the best price and they trust that will happen. So they don't ask the price. I found it like, I couldn't believe it. How are all these people going to buy all this stuff and they don't know how much it costs? And they said, oh, but they do really know how much it costs because they know they're all grouped together and they'll get at a lower price. And they do. And that's how it works. And until you have a similar model for all of our inputs, you know, everything we buy and you have a similar model to getting it out to market quicker, that it won't work. So what it needs is, if there's only one out there wants to invest and disrupt the market, come and talk to me, what it needs is a whole supply chain sitting in the middle and where you can buy cheaper and you can sell more diverse and across the UK. Yeah, well, that way you could also have the growing knowledge to give to people as well. So that if someone's wearing a new crop, the knowledge is there and the ability and the seed even, you know, it's just right. Yeah, here we go. So go for it because people will be sitting on land that's prime for this type of thing as well. So more and more flower farmers coming in, startups for sure. Yeah, yeah. More and more come in and go because it's quite hard to make money, actually. It is quite hard. Yeah. You can because we all do, but it's not the easiest thing to do. If you, you know, there are rather businesses easier for sure. There's not any of it as much fun as this, but and it's challenging as this. But it does. It requires a shakeup. That's what it requires. And yeah, it requires also government input and government investment. It requires effort to be involved. It requires labeling of flowers in supermarkets. I mean, you know, it's kind of my mission. If I get flowers to be labeled in supermarkets by the end of my days, I'll have done something. Yeah, crut is the... And these people know what they're buying. Crutching the supermarkets is one of the keys. I mean, they hold so much power with growers in general, even the flower growers as well. And so even the flower growers sometimes a contractor not to sell to anyone else. They have to sell. And then they've got a beautiful, they just rotivate in them into the ground. Can you believe that? Yeah. And it's just because of their contracts, the way it's set up as well. Yeah, it's just kind of what we're going to keep talking. I think that's the key. I think, yeah, the more we can talk about it, maybe, you know, the awareness that's something, you know, is needed. You will come across and maybe people will come forward. We all need a sugar daddy to pay for it to... When everybody likes a disruptive market. Yeah. And this is what... This is just waiting to be disrupted. Yeah. And it needs technology. Yeah. It needs a supply chain and it needs investment. It's also possible that the agricultural side could be part of it because, you know, they are very much at that disruptive stage, I would say. Yeah. And a lot with being told what they're going to be paid for, stuff, and things like that. So that side's boiling as well at the moment. So we'll see. Yeah. So any podcasts you listen to or any great books that you read that you want to pass on? It made me laugh that question because I don't read a lot of books, do I? Really? No, I've read even less. Yeah. Well, portable. How when you're out in the field? Oh, obviously we listen to all Ross Chandler's books. Oh, yes, of course. Things like that. And my mind would be... I followed Charles there having quite a lot. Okay. I can't listen to him loads, but I've listened to some of his jams. And I find him very interested and very reassuring when you're attempting to go more no-dig and a bit more environmentally friendly and I like. And it works. It's working for us. So there's proof. And bizarrely, Paul O'Falle is real. There's a chunk of Greg O'Lur. I shouldn't the flower range in world is very much a pioneer. And I quite like following him to some degree because he is a great... He loves natural using flowers that are grown because he's been a bit grower himself. He's German. Yes. He's in German. Yeah. He just inspires me. So he is my floral inspiration. Greg O'Lur. Sure. And he's been here for tea. There you go. I know. He was in the UK. No, you can't say me. You can't say me. You can't say me as well, Ross. And we could have said that you were a new big big tea. He was invited to the North Midlands to do a thing last year. And he wanted to use British flowers. And he came here and let me select his flower stems. All of his demonstrations. And that was the most nerve-racking thing I've ever done because I followed Greg O'Lur from a very long time. And I've got a lot of his books and everything. And they're having say to me, well, just pick me this, pick me that but I don't want any yellow. That was the only thing I remember. I did more bright yellow in his pick. So I had to pick and condition them ready for him. And he loved the gardens. And after his demonstration, he asked if he could come and revisit the garden. And he ended up staying for tea. So that is my biggest claim to fame, really. Yeah. Oh, and apart from last week, I did flash the Duke of Edinburgh. Yes. Yes. It came to stay in our village last week. Nobody knew this. I was sworn to secrecy for at least two weeks anyway, which is quite hard for me to keep a secret for two weeks. Yeah. We have only a really small village. It's a village of Cawndon, has about 500 residents. Wow, tiny. Yeah. So, but we have the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, lives here in the Mander, in the Manderhouse. And it's all behind, it's the biggest sort of estate behind a wall. We never see what's going on. And we've lived here 22 years and I have never done flowers for that house in 22 years, up until last week. So, you like to be British? Yeah. So, I was asked to go up to the house and he told me they got a very special guest coming. And it was to stay overnight. And I wasn't to tell anybody. And could I transform the house into like a spring garden? And I thought this is right up my street because it's just the right brief for me using sustainable mechanics. So, I did a lot of mantel vases. I've got a lot of vintage mantel vases. A lot of chicken wire and a lot of vase and just used everything that says spring out of the garden, a lot of bluffs and branches, a lot of our home grown tulips were really there. And it was just fabulous. It was an honor to do that and I've had a lovely letter to thank me. So, who knows where your work is going to lead you to. You never know who to do. Well, those photos. They'll be looking all over your Instagram. Yes, they're on there. They're on their Instagram. Yeah, lovely to look at that. So, quick fire round for both of you. What's your favourite flower? That there is a lot per season. It's so hard to ask for flowers. Because obviously, it's tulip, parrot tulips are... Wow. Yeah, parrot tulips are my favourite. Tulips in general are my favourite. Oh my. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I grew an Oculus and Hanoi Renakkin. Yeah, I like those too. But no, I love the parrot tulips. In a month's time, that will probably be my favourite. Yeah. I'm going to fit the arkeniums. And then it'll do... There it is. Yeah. Oh, it's obvious. The moral of this story is, when you grow flowers, you have lots of favourites. You should only grow what you love. Because people say, do I grow lilies and I don't? People say to me, do I grow gyms and I don't? People say to me, do I grow gyms? I feel around, I don't. And it's kind of like, I've kind of pre-selected it without knowing about it. Whereas I will grow eye. I think men have got a different perspective on things like that. If you can sell it, see what it's doing. Yeah, it's just relaxing. And then I will grow things that Paul has told me not to grow. And when it's grown, you absolutely love it. So I'll put you into your mind on that, Ross. Will you be growing gerberts? Come on, that'll be a lot of... Oh no. No, no. Too difficult to grow. I'm a glass house, can't I? But we're definitely growing lilies. We're trying the non-samp one, which is the LA range, which is looking really interesting, because you can plant them in the flour eight weeks later. Wow, how good is that? But we have to also think about where we're going to market those lilies, don't we? Yes. Because there's a different market for the lilies than there is to the florists. Yes, I'd say lilies. And the florist is a funeral, Florence. Yeah, well, we've not grown in sort of... Yeah, that's true. But we're... We're going for farm shops as well. Yeah, these are farm shops. Yeah, we've got these dual multiple markets going on, because again, it's risky to have one market. Yes. Because the best will in the world, people are flaky and they will change their mind or think that's not the right shade of colour, so you need another outlet for those plants and flowers, don't you? Yeah. That's what our eat, that's what we do. Yeah, we're multi-market. So even in the autumn, we drilled a lot of wallflowers to pull, and we didn't really think we'd sell them, but we sold a lot to a local nursery. Yeah. And things like that, that doesn't really give you that little extra income. You can't just think I'm selling totally low market. You've got to think where you can... What different types of flowers you can grow for? Like the Sweet Williams, for instance. Most of those will go out to the farm shop. Yeah. Quick and easy bunches to get out at long time, they're quick. Yeah, quick and mass production. You can just get them out, easy crops to grow. And it's cashflow. And it's a bit of a cash income, you know, it's regular every single week, it's there. Because you've seen how our tulip forced tulips this year. Yeah, brilliant, they were. I wouldn't say you make loads of money out of it, but it's a great cashflow at the time of year when... The winter, we've got any. When the cash is going in the middle of the direction. And that's what I'd say, we definitely more than broken even. I couldn't tell you the final figures yet, but we've done all right. But I'd like to do more. Yeah, but... It's volume business again, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And it's kept our awareness throughout the winter months going, especially on social media. So you can share that growing along with everybody else. And it just keeps your customers, your public there, still there. They've gone off for three months. No, you've got to keep in things of interest in. And we, for us as growers, we love growing and trying things. So it keeps our mind and focus going as well. So we've enjoyed doing the tulips. Yeah, yeah. And it keeps them well on tulips. So if you weren't growing and producing beautiful works of art with your flowers, what would you be doing? What was your childhood dream? Were you a school? Are you going to be when you grew up? I'm easy. Any type of farming. We're going to be a farmer, whatever. It doesn't matter whether it's cattle, mud or oil on it's sheep. But I would quite happily do pigs, dairy and beef, arable farming, large scale, root crop, don't mind. Yeah. I just wanted to be in events, really. I wanted to be in an event, a planner, a work in a big hotel, something like that. And winter dressing was one of the things that I would love to be a winter creative. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to do that. Another one. Another one. I wouldn't mind being a Michelin star chef for a day, but not forever. Not forever. That's fine. I was going to, funny enough, funny things happen when you're a child. I did work experience on a farm, but only because I didn't want to go to an office. It wasn't because I wanted to be on a farm, but that was quite interesting. And then I wanted to be a doctor, but I wasn't clever enough. So I ended up going to a union doing environmental science. God knows what I was doing that in the late mid-80s, nobody even knew how to spell environment. And then if you think about all the years later, when I was on a farm, I was a child. And then I did environmental chemistry in that. And then I did my dissertation on nitrates from fertilizers in soil and how they caused cancer. And that was like mid-80s, you can imagine, honey. And then how did that then turn into flower farming later on? Was it always there? I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. There's a connection, though, isn't there? There's always. And you've always got it. It just makes you understand the soil that was a bit more and the processes that go into the plant the way plants grow. That's good background knowledge, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I've got a thing about soil. It's a bit odd. A bit odd. So any advice you'd give to budding flower growers and florists, people who were there who were, there's been a lot of startups in flower farming and I love it. So they're just starting out and I always say to people, old transition, please transition into it. So don't give up your job on Friday for the time of your salary and start flower farming one day and think you're going to earn a living because you're not. Give up one day a week. Go four days work one day on the farm and make sure that one day pays for itself before you go two days on the farm. I think it's hard. It's hard in the beginning. Give yourself some time to try all things. You know, do it while you've still got a full-time job and you're getting paid for it. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. That would be my advice. A bit patient. Don't give up. I think the one thing is you've got to realise whether you've got an interest in that world or not at all, whether it's growing, selling, creating, you've got to be good at one of those things. Possibly two out of three. And then you've got to then have a go. Dip your feet in, not spend too much money on it. Classy as a hobby maybe initially so that you don't feel like you're actually wasting your time. It is a hobby. Hobbies cost. That's it. You say open up and then start selling to a few friends, get a bit of feedback and then off you go. Little tears. Little steps. Little steps. I think throwing a lot of money at something like that initially is probably not the right idea because that will be the quickest way. Well, it's the quickest way to recover a million there. You spend two million on a flower farm and you'll end up with a million after a year. Yeah. That's one of the... That's true. But it's taken us... What, we've been in this business 30 odd years and I feel like we're only just going to know what it's all about. Any professional has to do 10,000 hours. That's the key. Our son was a cricket player and he was always told 10,000 hours. Then you're a cricketer. The 10,000 hours will be five years over normal work life. So therefore five years you can maybe call yourself a flower farmer. I think you're exactly right. There's a question. So have another bit of a job going, have a rich husband that goes to work. No, no, but you know what? Or a rich wife if you're... Rich wife? Exactly. And a rich partner full stop. Or just do it in gently, slowly, organic growth and then you can start to realise what's to do when you want to borrow money doing it. That's when you're really focused, when you actually have to say right. Buy a land. Let's borrow, yeah, or even buy some polytronals. Let's borrow for 1,000 pounds to expand this business. Maybe you get to rent some land and then you have to invest in the land and things like that. Then you need stuff. Yeah, and then you need stuff and you don't realise you need stuff until you realise you need it. Or because you've got no life left. Yeah, that's right. I employed another one today. Mine are all female, middle aged, change of career lifers really. You know, the ones in the council, the ones being a nurse, that kind of thing. And they're brilliant. And they do RHS 2 or RHS 3. And the one that came today was really interesting was kind of out in the box. And she's part of the RAG scheme. And so you take them on per year and they do two days a week, 15 hours at minimum wage. And they are so committed because they're change of career as. So this one was an advertising and marketing, some high corporate, decide, then was a florist for a massive event florist in London, which she loves, so she can do florist. I'm thinking floristy, okay, that's quite useful. Because my other growers are not florist. So then she done lots of events and so on and she wants to do a bit of everything. So I'm thinking cutting and conditioning for the farmers markets because the growers aren't doing that. And then doing a bit of floristry. And then she doesn't really know anything about growing, but she wants to learn it all from the others. So then there'll be a team of four. So they do 15 hours a week. It's a minimum wage. They learn loads and they give loads. And it's always worked for me, always worked. That's something we should think about. I think we're getting definitely this year because we've got a lot of events happening this year. And we've doubled production on the cut flower side. I know what's going to happen when we get in the season and we're trying to harvest at night. You come in, you tea, you're back out there harvesting, you don't harvest in the daytime. It's not on there. So I just want to drive together. Everything needs water in like rain. Yeah, more water in, more irrigation. So I thought she was quite interesting as an all-rounder. So normally I would take a watch culturally. But this was she really wants to learn from the others. And they've become a really great team. You know, they're never a really hard working. Honestly, you should look at it, rag. WRAG used to stand for women's land army. I think the years ago. And I've never, never, ever. Now all three of them have finished their rag training and I've employed all three of them. And now this fourth one is a rag. So every so often they get one and they send me this evening and say, oh, I think it should be really good for you. And they've been right. That's really good to know. I think we're going to be ready for something like that this year. I might leave it to you. I think you definitely will be. Well, I want to thank you both for coming over and giving me your time. We've got all in the show notes, all of your where to people can follow you, your Instagram handles. And then people are going to put your website for all your farm days and all your events. You've got a massive event calendar this year just looking at it makes me feel tired. And people can come along. They can learn. I mean, brilliant. So that's, it's always great. And I want to be a realist with would be flower farmers. And that's really important. Yes. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Lovely to see you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. I look forward to next week's episode. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate and review on your podcast app. We do have some wonderful free resources on our website at thecutflowercollective.co.uk. We also have two free Facebook communities, which we'd love you to join. For farmers or those who want to be from our farmers, we have cut flower farming, growth and profit in your business. And our other free Facebook group is Learn with the Cutflower Collective for those starting out on their flower journey. All of the links are below. I look forward to getting to know you all. Bye. ♪♪♪♪