October news from the farm
This newsletter is about two things concerning running a small business: getting ‘greener’ as a business, and the creativity encouraged by working within strict boundaries.
Considering B Corp
Earlier this year I almost went down the route of working to qualify as a B Corp. Do you know what a B Corp is?
From their website I have taken this quote:
Certified B Corporations are companies verified by B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Being a B Corp means committing to a more inclusive, equitable, and regenerative way of doing business.
Some of their biggest members in the UK are:
Octopus Energy Group, giffgaff, Nespresso, Guardian Media Group, Huel Limited, innocent, Tilda rice, COOK, Riverford
I even got so far as to talk to a B Corp coach, who would charge what-I-couldn’t-say-whether-it-was-a-reasonable-amount-unless-I-worked-with-him to help one go through the hoops necessary in order to achieve B Corp status.
Sadly it was the beginning of my summer season when all of this was going through my mind, and I soon found that I had missed the first three group training sessions without even thanking him for offering me the dates. And so my B Corp qualifying days slid away from me.
But I like the defining criteria from the B Corp website and the principles of improvement they demand. I’m sure Nespresso and giffgaff have made extraordinary changes in order to meet B Corp standards (what do you think?) and so I began to consider the kinds of improvements I’d like to make to our own business practice.
On reflection, I’m not going to go through the B Corp hoops. Hoops designed for Nespresso or giffgaff might be a bit big for Common Farm Flowers. But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement here on this flower farm. The point of what we do is that we create an environment rich in forage and habitat for invertebrates.
So how can we improve what we do in those respects?
A brief history of the last 15 years
When we founded Common Farm Flowers in 2010 I had as little faith in my product as the next person. I was reacting to the sometimes combative response to my announcement that I was going to grow flowers for sale.
‘You’ll be too expensive,’ I was told. ‘Your flowers won’t last,’ I was told. ‘You’ll have to be unique,’ said people giving me a ‘What makes you think you can do this,’ face.
At that stage I was a barely-there forty-three years old, green behind the ears as a businesswoman and not yet strong enough in my opinion or experience to feel I could bat all these statements over the hedge with a ‘But my flowers are the best quality you can get,’ kind of response. I didn’t know yet that my flowers are the best quality you can get. And that they are often hard to source for the clients looking for flowers like mine to dress their table or event so they have quality and rarity value - practically haute couture in flower terms.
In short I had to learn to value my crop as though I was my customer, and be amazed by it as my customers grew to be.
And in that still yet-to-learn phase I dressed my flowers up as prettily as I’d been taught at American Vogue in the ‘90s. Packaging was everything. Printed boxes made to order, luxurious ribbon in colours to match the bouquet, careful aquapacking so that flowers arrived arranged fresh as a daisy in water so that the client or their giftee didn’t have to do anything as dull as actually find a vase and put the flowers in it if they didn’t want to. There was tissue paper, there were printed cards, there were labels. There was a wall of different coloured ribbons so that the right hue could be chosen individual bouquet by individual bouquet. And the bouquets by post business I founded boomed.
But then covid happened and the business by post business boomed so much I nearly physically bust myself. And so I stopped sending bouquets by courier and decided to shrink the business and make it much more local. In order to do that I had to believe that the locally grown flowers market had grown since I founded Common Farm Flowers in spring 2010.
I decided I’d focus on doing less better, and that meant walking away from the bouquets by courier business AND from the luxury wedding florist side of the business. Covid had taught me that I really did prefer to work on my own. So I needed to make a business that I could run more or less solo. And this meant cutting out the flim flam.
One day I had almost run out of ribbon with which to tie my bouquets. And I had a little chat with myself. ‘What are my customers buying?’ I asked myself. ‘Flowers,’ came the answer. So what were they not buying? Ribbon, tissue paper, labels, cards, boxes. ‘Therefore work without the stuff the customer is not buying,’ I said to myself.
And this is when I started to a) keep my costs down by not giving clients what they hadn’t bought, and b) I realised my business was therefore becoming more eco at the same time.
What else has changed since then?
Now, some years later, we’ve rationalised what we do even more.
My bread and butter are DIY wedding flowers: the client orders x number of buckets in advance, I harvest them to order, and the client collects. So - no delivery costs, and no packaging. Not even any string tying the stems I’ve cut the client into bunches of ten. No need: I’m cutting to order. I’m cutting for the client. I’m a big girl which means I can count and keep a list as I harvest so I know what the client’s getting.
I cut the day before the wedding or event, curating the list to ensure a balance for the client but also in such a way that a good percentage of the flowers are left for polinators. I never cut a whole patch down to the ground. And if I see that a parasitic wasp has predated upon a now dried husk of a caterpillar, and that that wasps eggs have eaten the contents of the caterpillar and come out to pupate in a huddle on a stem nearby I don’t cut that stem.
So, no packaging, no string, and the buckets are returned to be used again next time. And pupating invertebrates are spotted and allowed to carry on their metamorphosis.
So far so eco.
But one has to keep moving, improving, challenging oneself to become greener - why? Partly because it’s a good idea, and means your business will be less costly to the planet. And partly because it’s an interesting challenge. And in my old age I realise there is always something new one can do to cost the planet less.
What’s next?
So, this next season I’m only going to grow plants from seed which has been grown in the UK. Not, I assure you, from any jingoistic leanings, but because from seed produced locally (or at least in the UK) will grow plants which are resilient to our local climate, pests and disease.
A cosmos seed from a flower grown locally will germinate and grow well in my field because its parent germinated and grew well in another field nearby. A cosmos seed imported from a farm where flowers are grown to set seed in a different part of the world won’t be as resilient when it comes to winter flooding or our particular kind of local summer scorch.
If we all buy exactly the same seed from exactly the same grower somewhere else in the world then our plant genetic variety shrinks to one that flourishes only in that area. We risk, therefore, losing that plant if conditions change.
If we grow seed which has come from plants local to our environment then, while the cosmos may still be a cosmos, and even a named variety of cosmos, the fact that it did well in our area will make it more resilient to our area.
Like buying locally sourced wildflower seed which may be, say, Daucus carrota, the seed that produces plants from that variety in this area of Somerset will produce tall, willowy plants, with long, useful-to-the-florist stems and large plates of useful-for-forage flowers for invertebrates to feast upon. Daucus seed from a dryer area, a windy seaside in the east of the country, for example, might come up shorter, smaller, less resilient to the amount of water we have in our marshy Somerset clay.
To keep different flower varieties resilient to future climate change we need to grow seed in different places.
And so my step to a more eco way of flower farming this next season is to grow plants only from seed produced in the UK.
I have other steps I can take as time goes by: I’d like to trim my plots so that I can make enough compost myself to cover all my beds. And I’d like to use less compost. Less compost? Because we have lots of wild areas and the richer I make our beds the more the run off enriches the soil in the wild areas and the stronger the grass grows and the greater the struggle for the wildflowers to push their heads above the grass to flower. Make enough compost? I’m a RUBBISH compost maker. I could massively improve my practise there.
We’re also not brilliant at water saving. Much to do in that department.
But for the moment I’m ordering locally grown cut flower seed.
The challenges (and potential solutions)
Easy peasy you say.
Well, yes. But I will admit that there are hold backs.
For example it’s not always easy to see on a website if particular varieties of seed have been grown in the UK. So one has to search about a bit. Also the varieties I’m used to being able to source aren’t always available either. Plus the businesses selling in locally grown seeds often do this as a side hustle to their main business (often growing cut flowers for sale) so their seed shops, while exceptional quality, don’t necessarily have vast amounts available all the time, so one has to be on the qui vive for when their seed shops go live so that one can order sharpish.
Usually I save my seed ordering for a little later in the year. It’s usually a winter activity for me, trawling through online catalogues on dark evenings, dreaming of the summer to come.
This year I’ve jumped ahead of myself. And some of my seed is ordered already.
Not only that, but I’ve been more imaginative with what I’ll grow. Instead of just looking up the old varieties I’m used to, I’ve enjoyed perusing shorter lists on each supplier’s website and choosing what they have, rather than what I would automatically add to my basket. It’s great: making me more creative already and I haven’t sown a single seed yet.
Naturally I’m anticipating incredible germination rates as all this seed is fresh produced this season. Plus I’m assuming the plants I grow will be strong, tall, happy in the climate I offer them because they are the children of plants which survived this UK summer. I’m anticipating resilience and a super crop. We’ll see.
And finally, yes, I do save some of our seed. I am all set for Leonorus sibirica, Orlaya grandiflora, Ammi majus, Nigella (various) and more. This year a lot of the annuals went over more quickly than usual because of the heat and I’m anticipating a lot of self-sown Cynoglossum, for example, popping up through a warm autumn (all this lovely rain is making everything sitting about waiting for it germinate, not just the groundsel,) and possibly surviving until spring (depends on the winter here in soggy marshy south east Somerset where things rot in the ground more often than freeze to death.)
If I sow annuals for an early crop I do so in the polytunnel. And while everyone else seems to be sowing away like mad already, I haven’t started yet. I’ll sow sweet peas first at the beginning of October, and other varieties slowly through the autumn. I quite like sowing snapdragons in deep mid winter for a spring show. That reminds me - I must find some good locally grown snapdragon seed…
Workshops and demos
If all this talk of seeds has got you thinking about seed sowing yourself I’ve several seed sowing and growing demos, which might be of interest, including:
And a quick mention of online sessions that are still to take place this month:
Mentoring With Georgie (sold out but 2026 dates available)
The Foraged Autumn Wreath Demo online
The Flower Farming Intensive Workshop (3 days) at the farm
The Design A Cut Flower Patch Workshop online
The seed sowing shopping list
Back to my seed shopping, as promised, I've kept a list of what I've already ordered. You can read all the details over on Substack.
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