Why re-write a book from scratch?

Why re-write The Flower Farmer’s Year from scratch?

1. I am a MUCH more proficient flower farmer than I was when I published it first time round in 2014. I’ve wanted to re-write this book almost since the day the first edition came out. I hope you’ll find this version more comprehensive, wider reaching, clearer, more businesslike, that it has better appendices, and is easier to work your way around.

2. This edition is still full of information for people who’d like to grow flowers for pleasure. There’s a much broader consideration of which flowering plants to grow and why, whether growing for pleasure or profit, and how to grow annuals, biennials, perennials and so on. This is a great book for people wanting to start growing cut flowers for pleasure and have no interest in selling the stems they cut. (It’s just that I know how often an enthusiasm for growing cut flowers turns into a desire to make a living at it - which is why the book is about growing flowers for pleasure AND profit.)

3. In this complete rewrite I’ve written a much more comprehensive section about building a way to earn a living out of growing flowers for sale: social media, marketing, web design, business plans, cashflow forecasts etc are all considered. In this edition the process from growing cut flowers for pleasure to growing for profit is more clearly defined. And I’m grateful to over fifteen years of students asking my advice. Their questions have told me what people want to know about growing flowers for sale

4. This edition is less about me being on send recounting my experience, and much more about prompting you to ask the questions you’ll need to if you’re to turn an enthusiasm for growing flowers into a business. This edition encourages you to think harder.

5. The market for locally grown flowers has grown exponentially in the sixteen years since I started, and so it’s a much better proposition to set up a flower farm wherever you are than it was when I wrote the first version of The Flower Farmer’s Year. This new edition has room to consider many more kinds of flower farming businesses. For example, when I started growing flowers for sale none of my local florists would buy from me: now there’s a flourishing growing-flowers-for-wholesale market, and I wouldn’t need to sell any stems retail if I didn’t enjoy it.

   Why you should pre-order (please!)

6. The move away from the more-for-the-sake-of-more business model suits a flower farm well. This new edition of The Flower Farmer’s Year shares how a business can be built to suit the founder; how a way to earn this kind of living can fit the term ‘Lifestyle business’ perfectly.

7. If I can inspire and enable people to make a living growing flowers sustainably, so that their business has a net positive contribution to their local ecology as well as to the founder’s bank balance, then I am doing my job.

8. This book is not just for flower farmers: read it if you are looking for a way to make a living slowly, meaningfully, creating rather than consuming, on your terms, on terms which will not cost the planet. I use flower farming as the example, but the problems I solve can be applied whatever the subject of the sustainable business you plan to build.

9. Over many years of teaching, and more recently running the Common Farm Flowers Club, I’ve become a much better communicator, so this book should be just as engaging, but clearer, as well as more informative, than the last.

10. Nothing stays the same. Since I wrote the first version of The Flower Farmer’s Year the world has gone through a pandemic, wars, polarising politics. Social media has upheaved the way we communicate with each other and how we run businesses. The world has changed, and part of that change is the sprouting up of a daisy chain of people all around the world who have realised that growing flowers for sale is a way that they can earn a living, contribute to their local economy, and most importantly, contribute to their local ecology. Between us, we sustainably growing flower farmers will help save the planet, one flower at a time.

11. Sustainably growing flowers for sale is a worldwide movement. My club here is filled with members from all around the planet - many flower farmers, but not all. The club members, and sustainably growing flower farmers, are interested in making a meaningful living doing something which contributes to, more than it costs the environment. Flower farming is just part of a movement driven by others like Patrick Grant and his Community Clothing brand. Flower farming is a way to make a living thoughtfully, and in a way which means that you’re creating not consuming.

These are the reasons I’ve rewritten The Flower Farmer’s Year.

Now I hope you’ll pre-order. I’m putting the link here to the publisher’s Bloomsbury, but of course please do go and order from your local independent book seller as well. Naturally it is also available for pre-order via the online behemoth.