July News From The Farm
Half way through my season already and I will admit I’m glad the sun has come out at last. It’s always interesting though to see how a different kind of season gives you a different kind of harvest. Some of our shrubs and perennials and especially our roses I think have loved the wet winter.
It’s interesting too to see how the garden has reacted positively to a solstice feed: usually I’m not a keen feeder of the garden, but so much rain over the past ten months had me feeling that a lot of the goodness in the soil, especially in the mulch we use, would have been washed away. So I gave the garden a good feed just before the solstice and the roses especially have loved it, throwing long stems and lots of buds.
We had fun on Tuesday this week at my annual online rose workshop with, I think for the first time, more students from outside the UK than within. So lovely to see such a great international cohort of rose enthusiasts. We had a great session talking about the whole process of growing roses, from selecting varieties, to ordering, planting, pruning, mulching and eventually harvesting, and though we overran a little I think everybody enjoyed the demo piece I made with the roses I had cut for the session. This workshop is available to order as a download here, for a limited time (until 7th July.)
We’ve had a busy time recently with two three day workshops at the farm back to back in the past couple of weeks - our flower farming intensive workshop and our eco flower retreat. Both these workshops are now available as one, two or three day workshops.
We hold these sessions again in the autumn before we put the flower farm to bed for the winter so do have a look and book here. Our online workshops and demos continue all through the winter and keep us feeling that summer will return even in the dark days.
Though why I’m talking dark days when we are only half way through our season I don’t know! Lots more weddings to come. I’m very happy that our refined Affordable Wedding Flowers packages are proving so popular, and we are getting wonderful responses from our couples after we’ve supplied their wedding flowers.
We are taking bookings now for 2025. I’m determined to limit myself to only one booking per weekend going forward, so if you have a wedding or event for which you know you’re going to need flowers from us in 2025 then do get in touch sooner rather than later. So far we are sold out 7th June, 28th June, and 30th August for 2025.
And if you're further afield please take a look at our affordable wedding affiliates.
And a final word on weddings, if you're thinking of DIYing your wedding flowers this year or next, the recordings of our wedding flower package of workshops are available to buy until Thursday this week - find out more here.
Well I hope your biennials are germinating nicely – mine are mostly up save for the slower foxgloves. I have them in the shade of the crab apple trees and just check they aren’t drying out every time I pass. My recent sowing biennials demo recording is still available to buy if you missed out and would like some guidance on this topic - there's still time to sow biennials for next year!
Right, I must hurry – as I am writing this a YouTube Club live at five calls!
Happy July all – I hope you enjoy the sunshine, get a bit of down time, and don’t forget, a thirty stem challenge might be just the thing you need to do right now.
Georgie x
Please upload banner from store admin blog pages
