commonfarm-theflowerfarmer

Rabbit wars and sweet pea trials

2012-02-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

We're conducting a trial. These little tunnels cost £100 from First Tunnels and I think are brilliant (except they don't stack for storage). With them we've covered three shortish beds into which

we've planted 8 or 9 each of three varieties of sweet pea: Our Harry, Royal Wedding and Pink Pearl (Pink Pearl's a new one on me for this year). The seeds were planted in root trainers last October and are good sized seedlings now. So we've put them in these beds, along with a few calendula, some cornflower Black Ball and a little cerinthe Major Purpurescens to see if they'll come into flower any earlier than the other seedlings which we'll plant out without protection in April some time.

The seedlings haven't grown much since we put them in several weeks ago (before the frost) but they will be well settled by the time the growing season proper gets going. As usual we put them in a trench of well rotted manure and planted them about a foot apart. They've been pinched out down to two pairs of true leaves each (the extra leaves you see have shot since I did the pinching when they were still in root trainers around Christmas time).

Fortunately these little tunnels blew across the land before we had a chance

to anchor them properly so there are little holes we can examine our coming crop through.

We've placed them in the middle of our frost pocket - I mean field. As you can see there are more

beds being put together next to them into which more sweet peas will be planted in late April once the cold frosts are gone and the rabbit proof fencing has gone in.

Can you see the shallow trench Fabrizio's cut with a turf cutter? This will be filled with

chicken wire on Monday. Then there'll be a fence topped with one strand of electric

which we do run off the mains. It doesn't hurt much if you touch it, but it does flatten you.

Other crops are still over-wintering in the tunnel. But there are a few

sweet peas planted in there too - three white, three blue, three pink, planted a foot apart - again the trench filled with manure is the number one necessity in our sweet pea planting regime.

In other news the tulips are finally off the ground and so far out of mouse reach.

And the bay trees are over wintering happily.

As you can see we've yet to fill the new end of the poly tunnel with a useable bed.

One thing at a time...

If I can get an hour tomorrowI'll be off to the neighbour's for lots more horses' poofies

(coy are'n I?) to dig into the old beds,

the earth of which we don't replace in the tunnel as some people do, but which we do bulk out with a lot of water retaining and food rich organic matter each year.

How are your sweet peas doing? What have YOU got in YOUR tunnels?

A random treat....

2012-02-09T11:57:00.000-08:00

My Dad sent me this. He was mighty amused I can tell you. Not unamused myself I might add... What do you think?

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels

And today we put up giant windmills which cost more in carbon footprint to build than they will ever recoup in electricity they create. Still, I'm sure somewhere there's a bearded loon we laugh at for trying to extract sunbeams out of something - and I'm sure we won't laugh at him forever for one day he will work out how.... I have to believe it, for the sake of my children and my children's children. I am a glass-half-full styled person, and therefore enormously fortunate.

Valentine's day at Common Farm Flowers

2012-02-06T07:07:00.000-08:00

For your Valentine's delight we offer:

A simple bouquet:

Hyacinths, willow, euphorbia, euonymous, ivy - £42 inc p&p throughout UK -

all grown, cut & tied here at Common Farm.

No pesticides, no chemical perservatives, just fresh flowers from the farm.

12 bouquets for the price of 10 -

send your beloved, or your mama or your very bestest friend

a bouquet from Common Farm every month for a year.

All our flowers are seasonal and cut to order. We don't treat with

preserving chemicals or fly in from Africa via Holland.

All our flowers are grown, cut and tied for you here at Common Farm.

12 for 10 £420 inc p&p, 6 for 5 £210 inc p&p

A sweet pea for your sweet pea?

My 'Love Letter to the Sweet Pea - Dear Lathyrus Odoratus' could be the

valentine's present for which you've been searching for years.

My love letter includes history, lore, growing tips, cutting tips, conditioning and arranging tips

for you to have sweet peas from June till October.

The Love Letter comes with a pack each of Cupani (heritage), Diamond Wedding (a white, grandiflora sweet pea), and Mrs Walter Wright (a deep lilac Spencer sweet pea, the couture crepe de chine lingerie of the sweet pea world), as well as a willow dibber whittled especially for you by Fabrizio Boccha. £15 inc p&p.

All our flowers and offers are strictly limited in numbers: we aren't a mass market organisation - we keep things tiny and perfect so please hurry to make your orders - we'd hate you to be disapointed.

COMMON FARM FLOWERS

Flowers from the farm: organically grown, cut and tied in Somerset.

08458 946 770

georgie@commonfarmflowers.com

Planting Crab Apples

2012-01-31T13:19:00.000-08:00

This blog is a joint effort - mostly by Fabrizio who speaks in normal type, when I barge in I've put myself in italics.

The pregnant curve of crab apples, making a drove with the native hedging on the left, across the meadow we call Lady's Smock (for obvious reasons) to the bee garden we've made in the far corner. Yes, our bees have their own garden, their own pond, with its own beach -

Fabrizio a perfectionist? You think?!

Note black plastic mulch in background - usually I plant through it but I have run out and am awaiting delivary - I will have to put it on afterwards which will be very fiddly. It is no exageration to say that mulch will double the growth rate of trees or hedging planted through it.

When we bought it Common Farm was made up of a crude square of bare green fields: no hedges, just masses of over-fed grass. Since we've been here we've been slowly cutting the fields up into smaller meadows with hedges and bands of trees, making what Fabrizio likes to call 'Hedge World.' And now we have the main hedges in (we've been planting about fifty metres of native hedging, bought from Ashridge Trees in Castle Cary, a year since 2005) we're putting in the pretty part - we are a flower farm after all, and that's bound to be a bit of a ferme ornee (is their no english equiv? Fab - ed.) - so here we're planting a bosk (well if you're allowed to make up words entirely can't I use recognised as normal usage Frenchisms? GN - other ed) of indigenous Crab Apples (Malus sylvestris).

Getting the curve right was difficult - in reality the line of apples is not parallel with the hedge. I've splayed it out wider at the beginning to trick the eye into percieving greater distance..

I do not attempt to improve the soil or dig a hole twice as big as I need for the individual whip. In my boggy-but-nutritious, thick clay soil this would be counter productive; incorporating compost would create a boggy sump and I know from experience that crab apples do well in my soil and need little help. Also Mr. Fox will root up anything smelling of blood,fish & bone.

The head start that I give my trees and hedging plants are:

Plant small; these 60cm whips are cheap but of the best quality(I recomend Ashridge for bareroot hedgeing). In 5 years they will be as tall as maidens planted at the same time, will have cost less and will have taken far less aftercare. They are also fear more likely to have survived and (in my opinion) produce healthier mature specimens.
Keep roots moist in a wet opaque bag - DESICATION & ULTRAVIOLET KILL ROOTS.
This year I am also applying a gloop of mycorrizha from Root Grow which helps faster plant root establishment. I am very interested to see if this works as it comes highly recommended by a number of plantspeople includeing Emma Bond who presented a course on garden design at Common Farm last Autumn, and Sara Venn who teaches variou workshops here - see our courses page for further info.
Mulch doubles growth rates in the first two years. I hated the idea of spending money on unsightly black plastic, but having seen the difference in establishment rates between use and non use I am an enthusiastic convert.
Spiral guards will save a lot of heartache later on - you have been warned.

I make my holes with a hedge slasher given me by my mother in law. Less work than a spade (no mean consideration when you have 250 Hedgeing plants to heal in) and less liable to snap in my thick clay.

The roots are dipped in the mycorrhizal paste,for there must be direct contact between the two. Great care is taken to align the place where stem meets root with the soil surface(sometimes you can discern a yellow collar at the top of the root which then turns into green stem..

Heel in hard. I don't want there to be any air pockets which the

roots might meet nd shrivel in an air pocket.

Spiral guards are essential and should be pressed into the soil to prevent vole damage. There's a right way up for the guard to go on so that no ridge is presented to a growing side shoot.

And there you have it - Fabrizio on the pregnant curve of crab apples planted across the Lady's Smock reaching towards the bee garden. Another un-designed but I hope happy good idea in the slow development of the land here at www.commonfarmflowers.com.

HAPPY PLANTING.

And that's quite enough useful info - let's take time now for a commercial break:

IN OTHER NEWS...

Valentine's day draws near and we have,

for your true love's delectation and delight...

Dear Lathyrus Odoratus...

a love letter to the sweet pea.

I've written a little treatise on the delights of this, my favourite, flower: its history, provenance and lore as well as tips to ensure good germination, seedling survival and then how to plant out, keep, and finally cut, condition and arrange your sweet peas for summer-long scent as cut flowers.

£15 inc p&p for Love Letter, and one each of a pack of a heritage, a grandiflora and a spencer type of sweet pea, and a willow dibber cut by Fabrizio for planting with.

The Valentine's bouquet package

(we do this package all year round in fact so order too for your granny, your mama, your dearly beloved friend...)

12 bouquets for the price of 10 - a bouquet a month sent all year round to anywhere with a UK postcode - all grown, cut and tied here at Common Farm Flowers. £420 inc p&p.

To order please e-mail georgie@common-farm.com

or call

08458 946 770

THANKYOU!

and happy gardening.

#slugwars

2012-01-26T05:53:00.000-08:00

There has been CHAT on Twitter on the subject of SLUGS this morning.

And the suggestions for eradicating the little b*****s are so wide and varied I can't help but quickly post the list for fear I might forget any when they shortly fall off my time line.

To kill a slug the twitterati say you should arm yourself with:

1 scissors (not for the fainthearted)
2 salt (fizz)
3 bran (?!?!?!) - I've heard elsewhere of people using porridge too - but for those of us with #mousewars running concurrently as the #slugwars this is not an option.
4 beer traps - yeeeeeees - though my slugs never seem to find them.
5 coffee traps - variation on a theme.
6 upside down citrus peel - eg an empty half a grapefruit. I think the theory is that since citrus peel in any quantity is bad for compost (is it?), & perhaps because you're all no doubt making marmalade and therefore might have the odd half empty orange skin to hand - you put these out, upside down, for the slugs to hide in during the day - then you attack the sleeping critters with your scissors, salt etc. Hmmm - seems labour intensive to me.
7 vaseline - good for things growing on in pots. Smear a little vaseline all the way round the top of the pot and the slug will not like to cross it.
8 copper - ditto, slugs don't like copper circles which when joined (am I right?) make a teeny electric current which we toughies don't mind but which give the horrid slug a nasty shock. You can get very expensive shop-made copper circles, shop-made copper backed selotape - or you can hammer flat old copper piping and make your own (as does that King of the make-do-and-mend Fabrizio Boccha of Common Farm Flowers.)
9 lobbing - I think ineffectual - it's only a matter of time before some Patient Gardener discovers that slugs are homing territorial creatures just like their cousins the sweeter but just as destructive snail.
10 Running ducks - now of these I would like a pair - does anyone have a couple I could buy off them? Somewhere closeish to Wincanton?

woops - forgot a few!

11 stamp on them with strong wellied foot
12 cut them in half with sharp spade
13 dig pond especially populated with giant greedy frogs very close to tenderly filled, slug prone beds
14 you could use traditional slug pellets but not i - organic slug pellets in my experience are HOPELESS waste of money
15 wood ash - very good idea i think this one so long as ash cold so won't kill your plants
16 spear them with sharp couch grass root - one for the fairies in hand to hand combat methinks

Valentine - or wonderful present whatever the saint's day

2012-01-24T09:27:00.000-08:00

Imagine something really different for Valentine's day...

Send your true love a bouquet a month throughout the year from Common Farm Flowers

and they will receive flowers that look like these...

February: pussy willow, catkins, viburnum, euphorbia...

March: daffs, sweet greenery, willow, ivy...

April: tulips - oh the heaven of them!

These are Abu Hassan but we do have a lot of other colours too.

May: alliums, cowparsley, campion - the wildflowers begin to

show their shy faces in their banks under our hedges

June: roses, delphiniums - so much to choose from.

July: sweet peas - of course you could choose to send

your true love

a bouquet of a hundred sweet peas though I do love this

mixed bunch.

August: some people say they have no flowers during August.

We don't suffer from that problem here at Common Farm.

September: dahlias, bells of Ireland, bronze fennel...

October: Our season goes on with the annuals still flowering their

hearts out until the first frosts, and the Chrysanthemums, who I call the

Geisha girls of the cut flower garden coming in to make their late season splash.

November: the first of the paperwhite narcissi, hedgerow goodies like spindle berry

and old man's beard, rose hips, and still the garden goes on giving though there

are frosts taking the tender annuals.

December: your valentine will receive one of our gorgous everlasting

willow wreaths, dressed for Christmas with hedgerow bounty

which can be removed after Christmas leaving the willow to be used

throughout the year.

January: paperwhite narcissi, euphorbia, willow, viburnum -

who says there are no flowers in the garden in January?

12 bouquets for the price of 10 -

£420 for a bouquet to be sent to your valentine once a month, every month, for a whole year of

English country garden beauty.

e-mail georgie@common-farm.com or call 08458 946 770 to order or ask for further information.

All our flowers are organically grown, cut and tied by us here at Common Farm.

No pesticides.

Making Marmalade Common Farm Flowers Style

2012-01-19T14:29:00.000-08:00

Why make your own marmalade?

Because shop bought is usually too sweet and too jammy for my taste.

Marmalade should be bitter, with bite, and the perfect accompaniment to hot buttered brown toast at any time of the day or night.

It's at this time of year that the marmalade fairy touches us all at Common Farm with an orange flame of madness. Fabrizio says marmalade day is the first day of the new year - a day when the dank and gloom of outside is banished by the sunshine coming into the kitchen to cheer all our wintry souls.

Above you see a crate of 20lbs of oranges - 10 for me (10 for another lunatic who likes to spend a whole 24 hour period jaring the scent of Seville for a year's worth of breakfast delight).

And here the jars. I never know quite how many jars I'm going to need for this venture - around thirty should do for 10lbs of oranges but best to be prepared for more depending how jiucy they are, how much they reduce etc. I put them through the dishwasher on a hot cycle then cook them at about 100 degrees in the oven just before the marmalade is decanted into them.

My recipe is essentially Delia's, although I make marmalade with three pounds of oranges at a time and use two whole lemons because I like it sour and don't like to waste good money on pectin sugar though I want my marmalade to set. The question of 'set' of course is a very important one - the set must be enough to make your marmalade into preserved fruit which won't go off in your larder, or slip off the edge of your hot, buttered toast, but not so that a year down the line you open your jar to find a chunk of solid concrete masquerading as a home made preserve. The question of WHICH kind of toast is also important - Daylesford Organic asked me this on twitter earlier (where I am @TheFlowerFarmer) and I reply without question that the toast should be brown, seeded, very thick cut, home made and SLATHERED with SALTED butter before the golden garnish of the marmalade is added to the mix.

Above you see all the pips from the oranges ready to be tied into a little muslin bag and hung into the orange mix while it bubbles slowly for two hours absorbing all the pectin from the pips, the lemons etc.

I make my marmalade as soon as I hear that there are Seville oranges in the shops and I never leave the oranges lurking about losing their pectin along with their freshness before making it.

Marmalade making at Common Farm is a bit of a marathon but discipline pays off - even Ian McAuliffe says my marmalade's not bad and he can be a bit of a fuss pot.

Two hours of bubbling gently is followed by this manic rolling boil. Before that happens six pounds of sugar, having been warmed through in the oven, is poured into the mix and disolved COMPLETELY or it might BURN on the bottom of the pan during this most delicately violent of processes. And the little bag of pips is wrung out into the pan so that every drop of that valuable, pectin rich gloop is used to make marmalade and not wasted in the bin. It's worth waiting until this little bag is cool enough to wring out by hand I think. Delia says you can squeeze the jiuce out between two back to back saucers but I know you get more with a real wrist wrenching squeeze.

Batch 1. Lovely set. No burned sugar.

Batches 1 and 2. Second lot much slower to get a set - I think the pan sat badly on the gas and the rolling boil didn't roll enough. Took me three quarters of an hour re-rolling to get a good set on this lot.

At last, batches 1, 2 AND 3 - batch three obediently set fairly sharpish, though, as you see, I had underestimated the number of JARS needed - the cereal bowlful will do for my breakfast tomorrow - or I might use it in a Marmalade Victoria Sponge - really, can't recommend one of those highly enough - with Marscapone (sp) cream... praps a slosh of Cointreau turned into the cream... a teeny drop of orange essence in the cake mix, perhaps a little almond in the cake mix too...

putting up the new poly tunnel - a picture story

2012-01-17T02:51:00.000-08:00

First empty tunnel into greenhoues - jamming it all in willy nilly - forecast -4 tonight - not a night for leaving tender anything to be fingered by Jack Frost.

Then discuss how to take doors off old tunnel, how long this will take, whether we can do it all in one day, notice that the wind's getting up...

See? Greenhouse very full.

Flower Farmer in charge of taking pics (loafing about in sunshine) while Fabrizio does the hard stuff (plus ca change!)

Unwrap new poly cover - careful! don't use a knife!

Take old poly cover off.

Have THREE ladders to hand for the unrolling of new cover along spine of newly extended tunnel.

Here she comes!

Batten down hard.

et voila!

Twice the poly tunnel in one day - thank goodness there was barely a breath of wind and the sun shone or we may still be waiting. Remember those sweet pea seedlings in the top pic? No prizes if you can guess where I'm about to plant them!

IN OTHER NEWS!

Valentine's day is coming: order our 'Love Letter to the Sweet Pea' including one pack each of a heritage, a grandiflora and a spencer variety of sweet pea seeds for £15 inc p&p

Splash out for your Valentine by ordering 12 bouquets to be send once a month throughout the year. I'll do a special blog on this shortly, but if you scroll back through our blogs you'll see the kind of bouquets we do and hopefully will be inspired to order 12 for the price of 10 £420.

Tunnel provided by First Tunnels

Orchard Management Workshop - how we fed them

2012-01-15T02:57:00.000-08:00

I forgot to take any photographs - total fail there - but was told that the mutton and caper stew was worth blogging the recipe.

As per this recipe was rather made up on the hoof, but it seemed to work well.

Feeds 10 with leftovers for four.

2lbs good quality diced slow grown mutton (ours came from Kimbers up the road from us)
4 large carrots
4 large onions
1 whole stick of celery
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 cup of soaked flageolet beans
1 small jar of capers (best in salt rather than vinegar if poss - rinse salt off thoroughly before use)
a slug of brandy
flour for rolling the meat in
salt and pepper
6 large potatoes to gratin on the top

In a little vegetable oil, very gently melt the roughly chopped onions, carots and stick of celery in a cast iron casserole. This can take up to half an hour - you're not frying them, you're melting them.

Roll the mutton chunks in seasoned flour and fry them off in a pan until they've taken a little colour. You're not cooking them through, just sealing them a little bit.

Add the mutton to the veg mix.

De-glaze the pan you fried the mutton in with the slug of brandy, then add the tins of tomatoes. capers and flageolet beans to the de-glaze mix. When it's warm add this to the casserole where the meat and veg are waiting for them. I do this because years ago chef Simon Adamczewski told me that adding cold liquid to meat will make it tough - and the whole point of this exercise is to render the mutton sweetly tender.

Stir your stew about to distribute the ingredients evenly then put the heavy lid on the casserole and the whole lot in a slow oven (around 100 degrees) where you should leave it to cook gently for about five hours.

Because stews of this nature are always better the next day I then put the cooked stew to keep cool in our cold porch (no room in the fridge usually).

Then peel and thinly slice the potatoes and leave them too overnight in water which will draw out a bit of their starch.

In the morning lay the sliced potatoes on top of your stew so that the stew is evenly covered by them and put it back in the oven to cook again. 150 degrees for one hour then rack the oven up to 180 for an hour to crisp up the layer of potatoes.

Happy eating!

Constance Spry - a remembrance of summer past - a longing for summer future

2012-01-06T05:01:00.000-08:00

'It is a curious thing that, in spite of the superb examples set before us

in the pictures of the great Flemish and Dutch painters,

we are apt to neglect what I must call, for want of a better name,

the mixed bunch.'

Couldn't agree with you more Madame.

All these flowers were grown, cut and tied by me, Georgie N,

here at Common Farm Flowers. Inspired every day by the inimitable

(how could one immitate one so anarchic?) Constance Spry.

News from the swamp (January at Common Farm Flowers)

2012-01-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

CommonFarm Flowers, Wincanton, Somerset

www.commonfarmflowers.com 08458 946 770 georgie@common-farm.com

Order flowers from us for MotheringSunday. £42 inc P&P

HAPPY NEW YEAR one and all – I hope you’ve all had a restfuland not too liverish time and are springing into January with verve andenthusiasm as are we (ahem!)

Seriously,we’re already buzzing with plans and ideas – before we’ve even really startedplanting. Although I gave in totemptation and put some sweet peas in to root trainers yesterday – and someOrlaya Grandiflora – and some Crambe Cordifolia (yes we may be forced to open anursery side to the business one day).

We areholding a lovely list of workshops thisterm, so if your new year resolution involves taking UP an activity rather thanrelinquishing a poison this is the place for you.

Orchards: planting, pruning, espaliering –with Sara Venn. Sat 14^th Jan, 10-4, £65 per person inc lunch (2places left)

Garden design: with Louise Dowding of thatwonderful garden in Martock. Tues 7^th Feb, 10-2, £49 per person inclunch.

Wedding Flowers from the Garden: with me, Georgie. Plant your owncuttings border and take it home with lots of tips for how to make the most ofthe flowers you’ll cut on any big occasion. Sat 25^th Feb, 10-2, £49inc lunch.

Social Media 4 Business: two more of Lucy Carrington’s sell outworkshops on how to optimise your business’ social media presence. Thanks toLucy’s encouragement and stream of hot tips Twitter has MADE Common FarmFlowers into a flourishing business. Shecould have the same effect on your on line presence too. 28 & 29 Feb, 10-2, £65 per personincluding lunch.

Creating the Blueprint: with NLP practitioner JessiePatterson. It’s all very well havingdreams, but how to make them reality? Come and learn how to make a plan you canstick to on a wonderful, inspiring day at Common Farm. Sat 3^rd March£75 inc delish lunch.

Spring Propagating: with Sara Venn come and learn seedplanting, plant splitting, all sorts of ways to expand your own garden stock withoutspending a fortune at the garden centre. You’ll take home goodies you’ve planted and all sorts of ways to putyour new knowledge to good use in your own gardens. Sat 17^th March, 10-2, £49including lunch.

Photography: wonderful garden photographerHeather Edwards(see her pics of Yarlington House in the December edition ofCountry Living) will teach us all how to SEE through the lenses of our digitalcameras – how to use light and shapes to turn our happy snaps into works ofart. Sat 24^th March, 10-2. £49 inc lunch.

Planting and maintaining a herbgarden: with SaraVenn learn about herbs, their culinary and medicinal uses, and how best to growthem in the garden. Sat 21^stApril, 10-2, £49 including lunch.

Dear Lathyrus Odoratus...

a love letter to the sweet pea

For your VALENTINE’S DAY I have composed a LoveLetter to the Sweet Pea – a mix of history, folklore, growing tips, and cuttingideas wrapped round three packs of sweet pea seeds, one heritage, onegrandiflora, and one spencer variety for your beloved to grow in their garden.£15 inc p&p.

And then of course there are theflowers...

From nowuntil April we have our beautiful GreenBouquets: euphorbia, ivy, euonymous, pussy willow, sheaves filled with thepromise of spring. £42 inc p&p nextday delivery throughout the UK.

Green bouquet from us at www.commonfarmflowers.com

Then oncethe apple blossom starts blooming and those thousand tulips in the polytunnel...they’re all yours if you’d like them. Our prices will be going up in April, so BOOK NOW at current prices if you KNOW you’re going to want to sendour flowers to anybody during the season. Call 01963 32883 to make your booking.

for a bride.............

And weddings. We love a wedding. Our flowersare organically grown here at Common Farm in Somerset. Call me on 08458 946 770 to discuss flowers forany special occasion – from Christenings to funerals, our flowers are allgrown, cut and tied here at Common Farm.

One of thehighlights of last year has to have been building a show garden for the National Gardening Show at SheptonMallet and we’re very happy to have been asked back. So put it in your diary now - Fri 31^stAugust to Sunday 2^nd September – and come and find us therethen. This year we’re building a gardenaround flowers to cut for a wedding – we’re thinking willow pergola, dahlias,late planted white agapanthus...

Spring tip: in mild weather uncover your dahliacorms if you can -they suffer from damp as much as cold.

I love my dahlias almost as much... or more than perhaps... my sweet peas.

We are...:

2011-12-11T09:37:00.001-08:00

I had to describe us today and came up with this:

Christmas at Common Farm CommonFarm 11 December 2012

GeorgieNewbery and Fabrizio Boccha were a writer and artist respectively when theymoved to their Somerset smallholding in 2004. But it soon became evident that if they were going to be able to staythere then they were going to have to concentrate on the smallholding side ofthings and mothball their ivory tower aspirations. They planted a wide swathe of willow roundthe edge of their property to act as a wind break and help with the drainage (CommonFarm at that stage was a bit of a swamp), and set to growing vegetables, withsweet peas for the barrow out front as a sideline.

Seven yearslater and the courgettes are struggling for space as that first wigwam of sweetpeas has expanded to fill two acres of cut flowers.

And Georgieand Fabrizio have become mail order florists: in the summer they cut beautiful bouquetsfrom their garden, and at Christmas the willow comes into its own...

Fabriziomakes wonderful wreaths, binding the different coloured willow stems into tightcircles which Georgie then dresses with hedgerow greenery. No two wreaths are the same. Fabrizio loves using willow because it hasbeen integral to the folklore as well as crafts in Somerset since timeimmemorial.

The hedgerowgarlanding, which Georgie keeps short so that the willow stems can be seen, islightly wired onto the wreath so that it’s easily removed after twelfthnight. Then the wreaths can be kepthanging year round. They dry out slowlyand their colours change but they keep their light subtleness and tactileattraction throughout the year.

One dayGeorgie is determined that the smallholding will make enough money that she canget back to her writing, and Fabrizio has a head full of sculpture he’s longingto make... But in the meantime life could be worse than sitting on a bench inthe sunshine garlanding willow with hedgerow bounty.

What do you think?

And for your amusement here's Heather Edwards photographing one of our wreaths on a blue door this week. The one holding the barrow to sheild the sun is Fabrizio. The one barely able to hold the camera still she was laughing so much is me. The pro on the Ercol chair with the proper camera is Heather. Did you see us in the Sunday Times Home section today? Quoted us and used one of Heather's lovely wreath photos (tho sadly not ours). Have a look at Heather's home page and you'll see our asparagus fronds hoar frosted.

I took this pic - shame about the grubby edge of the box and the slip of doorstep.

Still, lovely wreath though - this one was sent to the Royal Horticultural Society - get us!

www.commonfarmflowers.com

georgie@common-farm.com

Cranberry marmalade - a common farm flowers recipe

2011-12-06T09:46:00.001-08:00

Cranberry Marmalade

It's not quite a sauce, and yet not really a chutney: I call this cranberry mix a marmalade because there's marmalade in it. Christmas can be so very sweetly flavoured and fatty that I love thesharp bite of my Cranberry Marmalade, which cuts through all that fat with real zing and pzazz.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 lbs fresh cranberries
1lb dried cranberries
1/2 lb marmalade
1/2 lb soft brown sugar
1/4 pint cider apple vinegar
2 large onions roughly chopped
a chunk fresh ginger finely chopped
the jiuce and rind of two oranges
a bouquet garnis of cloves and black pepper corns

In a large pan I soften the onions in a little oil for a few minutes. I don't let them cook through, just a little. Then I add all the above ingredients, hanging the bouquet garni into the mix while hooked onto the side and easily removeable. I bring it all to a gentle bubble (not a rolling boil or it might burn on the bottom of the pan) and reduce it by about a third until it's a nice jammy mixture - although it won't set and still tastes sharp.

The whole gets decanted into 6 clean jars which I leave to cool before labelling on account of a sticky label applied to a hot jar will simply peel off in protest.

Come Chritsmas the mix will have matured a teeny bit and I'll have it to sharpen up the rich turkey, brighten up a cold ham, smoothed onto a chunk of creamy cheese.... until it's all finished for another year and I make more next December.

Enjoy....

12 days of Christmas...

2011-12-01T04:50:00.001-08:00

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

A day learning how to prune my pear tree at Common Farm Flowers in Somerset.
Pruning, orchard management, espaliering... Sara Venn of The Physic Garden will take us all through the dos and don't of fruit tree management - with a great big cheery lunch to keep us going and a wassailling thrill at the end. £65 per person, Sat 14th Jan, 10-4, lunch included - numbers strictly limited and places selling fast....

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

A day learning a bit about garden design from lovely designer Louise Dowding. Anyone who's seen her wonderful garden in Martock at one of their NGS open days will know how clever Louise is with shape and colour. Come along and be inspired by her take on the principles of making the most of your garden space. £49, Tues 7th Feb, 10-2 including lunch. No more than 8 people - we like to keep our workshops small so that the day is friendly and inclusive and nobody feels left out.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

A day planting a border of flowers that could cut for a wedding (better value than diamonds!) On this day Georgie Newbery (@theflowerfarmer - or yours truly even) will take you through the principles of seed propagation and cut flower growing especially with weddings in mind. You'll take home a tray with your garden planted: all you'll have to do is follow instructions to see them grow. With lots of clever tips and ideas for how to use your flowers for any kind of party, as well as weddings, this is a great day for bringing summer closer. Sat 25th Feb, 10-2, lunch included, £49 per person. Wouldn't it be a lovely present for a mother and daughter with a wedding in view?

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

A day for working out how you're going to make the most of your life.
Making the Blueprint with NLP practitioner Jessie Patterson will come and help you plan your future. A thought-provoking and inspiring day. £75 inc lunch. Sat 3rd March 10-4.

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

A day learning all about spring propagating with Sara Venn of The Physic Garden. From splitting herbaceous perenials to growing from seed, from spring pruning to making cuttings, come and spend the day at Common Farm having a go at all the above - you'll take home a bootfull of goodies as well as lots of new knowledge.
Sat 18th March, 10-2, inc lunch, £49 per person

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

A day learning to use that wonderful camera you've never quite got to grips with. Know you could get more from your camera? Look at other people's pics with amazement? Come and
spend the day with garden photographer Heather Edwards
and learn tricks and tips for making the most of light, the time of day, shapes, colour, all through the lens of your digital camera. 24 March, 10-2 - £49 inc lunch.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me.........

A day with Sara Venn at Common Farm learning all about
planting and maintaing a herb garden.
Sara will bring all sorts of goodies with her and show you how to make the most out of your culinary and medicinal herbs - her passion. Sat 21 April, 10-2 inc lunch £49.

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me........

Lots of bouquets from Common Farm Flowers to arrive regularly throughout the summer...
6 bouquets to arrive by post £450
12 bouquets to arrive by post £880
We love to do flowers throughout the season for special people who see our garden change from April through to October. Ring us on 08458 946 770 to discuss your special requirements.

As for the last three days of Christmas - well we recommend Easton Walled Gardens for seeds, Acrylicloche for garden protection, and Copper garden tools from Implementations.co.uk.

MERRY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING EVERYONE!

How to make a willow wreath

2011-11-26T02:30:00.001-08:00

Why don't you save your pennies and decorate your house for Christmas with goodies from your own garden...?

Herewith a Common Farm Flowers Willow Wreath dressed from the hedgerow. I only half garland the wreath because I love the colours of the willow so much.

To make the willow circle itself you need about 10 whips of withy or dogwood - freshly cut but not frozen is the easiest to handle. Twist one length into a circle, tucking the ends in at the end. Then one by one twist the other lengths of withy round until you have a good solid shape that you like. Bind them with the thin ends of the withy tightly pulled around (as above), tucking ends through and pulling hard until the binding sets strong. Cut off unsightly ends with secateurs.

Then wander round the garden picking anything you like for your garland - in this picture I used spindle, old man's beard (traveller's joy), box, ivy - but you can use any berries or greenery which tickle your fancy. For an especially Christmassy look try variegated evergreens like euonymus which have an inherently snow/frost touched look, or herbs such as rosemary for remembrance if there's somebody you'll be missing from your house this Christmas, or bay to keep the witches out. Of course holly and mistletoe could be used as well. Don't forget to check the hedge for rose hips or sloes which garland nicely too.

Using a reel of thin wire slowly wire your garland from one end to the other using short offcuts of your greenery and berries picked from your garden. When you've made enough garland hook it onto your willow wreath using the bound parts of the wreath to tuck the wire through. It's good to wire it in three places so that the garland sits nicely on the round shape of the wreath. After Christmas remove the garland and keep the wreath hanging somewhere - they look lovely drying slowly thoughout the year.

If you'd like one of these but think you'll need a bit of help why not give yourself an early Christmas present and come and make your garland here at Common Farm outside Wincanton with Fabrizio & Georgie helping? We're holding Christmas Decoration workshops on Sat 10th, Mon 12th and Tues 13th December. £49 inc lunch (see two blogs back for the mincemeat recipe we'll have in our mince pies) and all necessary supplies/equipment: book quickly though as places are selling fast.

Tel: 08458 946 770

or e-mail georgie@common-farm.com.

We'll have the wherewithall to make candle studded table centres, table or bannister garlands... all sorts.

If you'd rather we made your wreath for you, or as a gift for someone you know, then go to the Common Farm Flowers website. Last orders for Christmas Friday 16th December 2011.

www.commonfarmflowers.com

HAPPY HEDGEROWING!

Social Media For Business.... more thrilling than you might think

2011-11-23T11:05:00.001-08:00

Another busy day at Common Farm Flowers. That wonderful @sparkybakewell came to take another of her inspiring 'Social Media For Business' workshops.

We keep all our workshop audiences small because then there's an intimate atmosphere, nobody feels left out, and thanks to sparky's whistle peeping no falling asleep in the back row either.

She had lots of TOP tips for using Social Media Platforms to promote a business.

Here are just three of them:

1 ENGAGE with your audience: lecturing people or pronouncing then disapearing without being there to chat will get you no followers/custom. Social Media platforms are for one to one chat with your potential customers - you wouldn't say to a client in your shop, 'Buy this!' (shoving something in their face) then turn away and ignore them. It would be roooooood.

2 BE REGULAR in your engagement. Find out when your followers are on line and be there for chatting purposes then. Whether it be during commuter time, or children's bath time, at six in the morning (oh yes, you gardeners, we do chat that early - not selling, but reassuring ourselves that we're not living our ridiculous hours in a vacuum either) or Saturday morning. Step up to the chatter post at the same time every day and people will get to know that you'll be there for them to speak to you then.

3 REMEMBER THAT WHAT YOU SAY

DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

It's more important that you engage than that you spend a week (or six months) creating the puuurrrrrfect sentence. Do you always speak in exquisitely constructed, grammatically correct sentences? No. Do you generally manage to make yourself understood? I expect so. We can't all be Shakespeare, but we can all chat. So chat first and if you've the space/mental agility to cleverly manipulate (or should that be cleverly to manipulate?) your preferred language then we will all admire you for it.

For today's lunch we had roast beetroot soup with soured cream (made by me),

white sourdough from At The Chapel,

cheese from Keens Cheddar and Goldilocks from Godminster,

Oh and it turned out that the fresh apple and ginger flapjack

experiment was a winner.

You'd like the recipe you say?

OK...

To serve 10

Heat oven to 180 degrees.

Butter a small roasting tin.

4 oz jumbo oats

5 oz porridge oats

6oz dark muscovado sugar

8 oz butter

table spoonfull each sunflower seads, pumpkin seeds, golden linseed

2 tablespoonfulls golden syrup

4 apples peeled, cored and finely chopped

2oz fresh ginger root peeled and finely chopped

melt butter, sugar and golden syrup together in a pan over a very low heat.

mix all the other ingredients together in a large bowl.

add the butter, sugar, golden syrup mix and stir until evenly mixed.

fill your small roasting tin with the mix, squishing it flat with your hands until it's firmly squashed and will cook together rather than into crumbs.

bake for 20/25 mins or until the surface of the flapjacks is golden brown.

take tin out of the oven and after 5 or 10 mins slice the cooked flapjacks into squares before leaving them to cool completely before removing them from the tin and serving, as I did, barely cool, crumbly, and just completely delish.

Happy baking, happy tweeting, and I hope YOU've got your dahlia corms in under cover for the winter (unlike me.)

Workshops coming up at Common Farm:

'What you really really want...' with Jessie Patterson Sat 26 Nov sold out

'Xmas Decs from the garden' with Georgie & Fabrizio (including willow wreaths not unlike in basic tenet the willow Kirstie Alsopp was making this evening on her Channel 4 show) Sat 10th, Mon 12th, Tue 13th Dec 10-2 inc lunch £49 per person.

'Social Media for Business' with @SparkyBakewell Wed 14th Dec 10-2 £49 per person inc lunch

'Fruit tree management' with Sara Venn Sat 14th Jan 2012 - 10-4, £65 including lunch (& wassailing)

To book any of the above e-mail georgie@common-farm.com or call us on 08458 946 770

Keep an eye on the website for more... we love our workshops here at Common Farm.

Mincemeat Recipe

2011-11-20T09:21:00.001-08:00

I know I should have posted this before - but I only made my mincemeat today (meant to yesterday), Stir Up Sunday.

Due to a pretty even mix of inspiration and necessity (lacking some ingredients) I made the recipe up.

It is untried and untested - but I think will taste gooooood.

See Darina Allen, Delia Smith and Deborah Robertson for River Cottage in the Guardian for more sensible, practical, TRIED recipes.

So into a large mixing bowl I did put:

6 Blenheim Orange apples, peeled, cored & chopped up small.
225 shredded suet
1/2 a pot of home made Seville marmalade (250 g or 1/2 a pound ISH)
100g (a good sized chunk) v small chopped fresh ginger
Peel and juice of two lemons.
10g sunflower seeds
10g pumpkin seeds
4 teaspoons ground mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 nutmeg grated
350g raisins
225g sultanas
350g soft brown sugar
100g chopped dates
225g chopped candied peel

Gave this all a good mix - Fabrizio & I wished long & meanfully while stirring up, Wriggler & Bear not interested in wishing while there was a box of straws to be played with (their loss I say!)

Covered and left on one side overnight. Tomorrow I'll bake the mix in a cool oven (120degrees) for three hours before stirring in 6 tablespoons of brandy and spooning the mix into jars to mature for a fortnight.

The end.

Hope it works.

here it is out of the oven after its 3 hour bake

taste test: spoonful of hot mincemeat still un brandied on icecream 4 pud

how's that for an indulgent monday lunchtime luncheon!

slimming?.... next year!

Come to a Christmas decorations workshop on 10th, 12th or 13th December and you'll be able to taste them in mince pie form.

I use Darina Allen's pastry recipe from her Forgotten Skills of Cooking (not rocket science).

HAPPY STIRRING!

Workshops - I LOVE them!

2011-11-16T11:25:00.001-08:00

What could be better than a day out learning something new?

Here at Common Farm we have a lovely back room with a large, scrubbed oak table in it, lots of windows, and a wood burning stove. In the summer this room is where I do my flowers and it's usually packed with buckets filled with sweet peas and roses, all cut to order and labeled 'For Kelso order #...,' or 'To Cornwall order #...' But at this time of year (before the Christmas rush) we're quiet enough to hold a few workshops.

The oak table in the summer - seems a lifetime ago now

People come from miles around to make up small groups (I hate going to workshops where too many people loll in rows slowly falling asleep) to sit (or often stand) around our scrubbed oak board and learn something new. I've decided that the maximum number of people we can comfortably amuse in one day is eight, but I'm happy with as few as three. What we like here at Common Farm is for people to spend a day having a real break from their everyday lives, learning something new, and leaving at the end inspired to try something different, to challenge themselves....

This term we've had workshops on propagating, using social media for business, principles of garden design - all with invited teachers who come and cheerily dispense words of wisdom gleaned from long experience in their own particular field of expertise.

Next week we have two more 'Social Media for Business' workshops. These are held by @sparkybakewell of Twitter fame. It was she who told me to get on Facebook and Twitter to market Common Farm Flowers. She has advised me on how to connect my Twitter-feed, facebook page, and blog with our website. She has encouraged (firmly but not bossily) all our social media activity. We now have almost 1,500 followers on Twitter and a flourishing business which is based mostly on personal recommendation. We've never spent money on PR or marketing - nearly all our business is driven to us through social media sites - so I have no hesitation in recommending her as an inspirer of businesses to use those wonderful free portals through which one can engage with the total stranger, finding advice, encouragement, sales....

Table scrubs up nicely for a bit of glueing and sticking

And on Saturday 26th November we have NLP practitioner Jessie Patterson coming back to take one of her wonderful workshops in which people are encouraged to think about what they really want out of life, look at ways to abandon the slowing down guff, and identify those things that matter to them most. We all live bombarded by demands and necessity: we're pulled this way and that by career, friends, family - we can find ourselves putting all our energy into buying more pairs of winter boots when what we really need is...? You don't know the answer? Well, come and spend the day with Jessie and she'll help you find out.

Jessie says:

'What I really, really want...!'

A Whim, a Want, a Why not?!!

The clue is, as always, in the smallest part - the I, the You, yourself, you as the super powerful person here for a reason.

Sound a bit mystical...? Not really, actually totally pragmatic. Do you know anyone who just loves life? Bursting with energy and enthusiasm? Ever wondered why that was? What they'd eaten for breakfast?

Simple. No fancy dietary combination, no illegal substances. They've just got it - they've they discovered what it is they are here to do and they're doing it.

Want to discover your purpose? There are clues all around us. When you are feeling happy and enjoying your life you are on track and when your not feeling so good you've probably veered off the path. Living your life on purpose is what we are aiming for and on this workshop you'll discover what that is.... Can't wait!

Best wishes

Jessie

P.S Please bring some personal treasures and remember the clues will be all around you..

Jessie took this workshop here in the summer and I'm fascinated to see that of the people who came to it two have since resigned their jobs and made huge career changes. Amazing what a bit of fun, glueing and sticking and other unexpected activities can do for your future - on Sat 26th November you can find out what it is that really drives you and dispense with all the rest.

To book 'Social Media for Business' on tues 22nd Nov call 08458 946 770

or e-mail georgie@common-farm.com

£49 per person, 10-2 inc deurlish lunch.

To book 'What you really really want' on sat 26th Nov call 08458 946 770

or e-mail georgie@common-farm.com

£75 per person, 10-4 inc deurlish lunch

COMING UP!

GREAT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

Raw food - detox before Christmas - Tues 29th Nov 10-3, including lunch £75

Willow wreaths and Christmas decorations - Sat 10, Mon 12, Tues 13 Dec £49 per person inc lunch

Sat 14th Jan Orchard Management with Sara Venn 10-4 £65 per person inc lunch, loppers, fireworks...

Sat 7th Feb Louise Dowding on Garden Design and colour 10-2 £49 per person inc lunch

Sat 25th Feb Georgie Newbery on Planting a garden for a wedding 10-2 £49 per person inc lunch

Sat 17th Feb Sara Venn on Spring Propagating 10-2 £49 per person inc lunch

Sat 24th March Photography with Heather Edwards 10-2 £49 per person inc lunch

Sat 21st April Planting and maintaining a herb garden with Sara Venn 10-2 £49 per person inc lunch

Call 08458 946 770 or e-mail georgie@common-farm.com to book your place.

Oh and you remember that spiced apple cake recipe? Well I've refined it.

Try:

4oz self raising flower

2oz butter

2oz cream cheese

teaspoon of vanilla essence

teaspoon each of ground ginger and cinamon

3 eggs

tablespoon of milk

2 eating apples roughly chopped into quite small pieces

4 oz sugar

Put all the ingredients except the apple into the whizzer & blitz until the mixture's smooth.

Add the chopped apple and stir.

Decant the mix into muffin cases (the above quantities should make a dozen)

Put onto the middle shelf of an oven heated to 180 degrees and bake for 15 to 20 mins or The scent of the cakes will tell you that they're ready.

Happy baking and happy gardening -

And if your hardy annuals are in trays in your greenhouse/tunnel as are mine and too tall not to be badly frost nipped when the time comes then please do PINCH OUT THE TOP GROWTH! Leave two sets of true leaves on each plant. That should take them through the winter.

Seed buying tips for the cut flower borderer - or Don't do as I do, do as I say.

2011-11-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

The winking sunflower. Those yellow spots in the centre are the pollen -

a valuable food source for pollinating insects.

1. Watch out for Sunflowers advertised as pollen free - why on earth would you want to grow something that won't feed the insects in your garden? Pity those poor bees for goodness sake (and please scuse my rant.)

2. Think about colour combinations: a riot of colour and texture might make it difficult to put on a really good, if not matching then at least toning (hideous word but I can't think of a better one) display for a party or a wedding or even as little as a really fab bouquet.

Believe me I promise I DID see this combination in my mind

when I planted up my garden last May.

3. Perennials are much cheaper to grow from seed than to buy, but it might be just as possible to beg a bit of root or seedling off a friend.

A gorgeous double Monarda I bought unlabeled from a village plant sale.

The scent!...

4. Think about the time of year you like to grow things from seed and take cues from that. If you plant a lot of biennials in the summer and then forget about them in hot trays so that they die of neglect then perhaps biennials aren't the thing for you. It's fun to plant seeds in February. As the dark days drag on you can start your garden and thumb your nose to winter. Annuals are fantastic, easy to grow, and make such great displays I always snort with derision in return when smart ladies of a certain class and smell snort at me and say, 'I don't grow annuals.' I think 'More fool you, with your gaps in your border and nothing to pick in August.'

5. We've had such a mild autumn you could still perhaps risk popping in a few hardy annuals in seed trays and keep them somewhere relatively protected over the winter. I have white snapdragons, ammi, some salvia (which I could remember which but it's too dark to set off for the poly tunnel to check now), lots of sweet peas which are so tall now I think I'll pinch out the top leaves leaving 1 true set to take them through the winter. I've got some rather vast cerinthe too - ditto I'll pinch out the bulk of the plant leaving just a little for it to overwinter with. They should give me a good early harvest though if I can keep them from dying of frost or botritis between now and then.

6. Line your greenhouse or tunnel with a little bubble wrap for winter to keep the place insulated - it won't keep serious frost off but will keep costs down if you heat your greenhouse. If you do this though make sure you open the door from time to time to encourage circulation and don't over-water the plants you keep in there - botritis will take your plants in a heartbeat, especially if they're crowded together with little airspace.

7. Don't buy too many seeds. I have odd ways of rationing my seed buying: only five packets from each supplier for example. Which means I only end up with about 30 packets of seed. I'm a professional flower farmer but I don't grow that many different kinds of plants - of the 30 packets some will remain unplanted, a lot will be left in the packet at the end of the season. I MUST use up last year's seed. If it came in air tight foil packets and I kept it dry and in a dark place throughout the year then I should get a good germination rate in the second year of planting from the same pack. There is no need to grow more than three - no - four - no - really, five kinds of larkspur.

My beloved invasive Calendula

In 2012 we'll be down from 17 kinds of sweet peas to 9. I refuse to ever buy any more calendula seed - I WILL have beds and beds of them if I don't weed out/hoe in the seedlings that I'll be swamped with in the spring. Ditto Nigela: Miss Jekyll's lovely and I have carpets of her seedlings out there at the moment. I COULD pick up a few and pop them into the poly tunnel to over-winter and maybe give myself a little earlier harvest. But to be perfectly honest all polytunnel action is on hold until Fabrizio puts up the extension we bought from First Tunnels (who have great little bits of you-tube on their site with cunning tips re keeping tunnels/greenhouses warm with tea lights in jamjars for example).

The delphiniums were a gift from a neighbour. I'm still cutting them in November.

8. The National Dahlia Collection in Penzance has the most wonderful dahlias available to order on-line. If you fancy expanding your dahlia collection then it's worth ordering their little plants. You can grow dahlia from seed and get flowering plants in your first year but the variety available is greater if you grow them from plants ordered. They aren't expensive and the quality is fantastic.

Can you name this dahlia?

9. Think of the space you have available: in your greenhouse, outside your back door, on your bedroom windowsill, in your beds. Don't buy all the seeds you want. Am I repeating myself? Will I listen to myself?

10. Enjoy yourself. Wash out your pots w a spot of bleach before you use them again. Whatever you do don't buy seed trays. Instead have a pot/tray amnesty locally - you'll be swamped with perfectly usable trays and pots and save yourself a fortune.

11. If you're nervous about germinating from seed then give yourself a break and come to one of our propagating workshops next spring. See previous blog for dates and times. The wedding flower workshop won't only be for brides to be: it'll be for anyone who wants to have a wild display of fantastic annuals next summer, and all summers on and on.

Sweet pea Mollie Rillestone

Christmas goodies to order from Common Farm Flowers

2011-11-08T02:33:00.000-08:00

Christmas at Common Farm Flowers

One of Fabrizio's willow wreaths, dressed for autumn.

Order for now or for Christmas: £42 inc p&p to post anywhere throughout UK mainland.

What else do we have to offer as Christmas presents?

Hand thrown stoneware posy pots

- ideal for that perfect rose, a tiny bunch of sweet peas fresh from the garden, a little handful of herbs...

Posy Pots in Tactile Stone - £20 for three plus p&p throughout UK mainland

Handmade in Gloucestershire to our own design, these also come

In Chung blue green glaze

Posy Pots in £20 for three plus p&p throughout UK mainland

Limited edition stoneware cider pots

These gorgeous mugs hold one pint of cider, beer, or tea or coffee if you prefer - I use mine as a kitchen vase, but then nothing's sacred where my flowers are concerned.

Cider Pots £20 each plus p&p

And for the person who says 'Enough stuff!'

I say:

For a DIFFERENT KIND OF PRESENT, why not give a day at one of our

WORKSHOPS at Common Farm

Autumn 2011/Spring 2012

2011

15 Nov- Principles of Garden Design with Emma Bond of the Bath
Gardening School.

Bring your niggling garden design problems and let
Emma show you how to design your own solutions. You’ll take your own plan home along with
lots of clever solutions and inspiration to make the garden you’ve always known
you could put together if only you knew how. 10-2, £49 inc lunch.

22 & 23 December

That wonderful @SparkyBakewell's coming back to take two more 'Use Social Media Sites to Promote Your Business' workshops. Of the eight people who came to the last one all are now on Twitter finding new customers for their products. Sparky's the girl who insisted we tried Twitter here at Common Farm Flowers and who runs our website for us: without her we wouldn't have a business. #justsaying.

26 Nov- Discover what you really really want with Jessie Patterson

Feeling dissatisfied with life? Feeling that there’s
something missing that would make your life work better for you if only you
know how to identify the problem? Treat
yourself to a day of self-discovery with NLP practitioner Jessie Patterson.

10-4 £75 including lunch. Paper, glue and scissors
all provided....

29 Nov- Energising Raw Food workshop with Colette Woods

With demonstrations and tastings Colette Woods will
take you through all sorts of recipes for a healthier lifestyle. From delicious chocolate ‘cake’ that you can have for breakfast to mouth watering ‘lasagne’, Colette will talk about all the
benefits of a raw food diet as well as demonstrate how delicious that diet can
be. Detox BEFORE Christmas... 10-3 £75 including lunch.

10,12, 13- Dec- Christmas decorations from your garden
with Georgie and Fabrizio

Make your own everlasting willow wreath for your
front door and deck it with gorgeous Christmas goodies. Learn how to and make your own Christmas garland, or candle studded wreath for the table. 10-2. £49 including lunch and
all materials.

2012

14 Jan- Fruit tree management with Sara Venn.

Come and learn planting, pruning and espaliering
fruit trees with Sara Venn (who brought up those amazing trees featured in
Westminster Abbey last April). This is a practical course in which you’ll be
encouraged to attack our fruit trees with your loppers so that when you go home
to prune yours you’ll know what you’re doing. We’ll end the day with fireworks in the orchard – A Wassailling we will
go...

10-4 £65 including lunch.

7 Feb – Garden Design with Louise Dowding

If you couldn’t come to Emma’s course in November
but would like to know more about garden design for the resolution of your own
sticky problems then a day with plants woman and designer Louise Dowding might
be the answer you’re looking for. Anyone
who’s seen her wonderful garden in Martock will know what an eye she has. Perhaps she could inspire you to make a garden
as beautiful...

10-2 £49 inc lunch.

25^thFeb – Wedding Flowers with Georgie

Wedding flowers can be devilishly expensive. Whether for yourself or for a friend, why not
cut your costs by planting a wonderful cuttings garden to use for wedding
flowers? Flower farmer and florist,
Georgie Newbery will talk you through bringing on your garden and give you
great tips for how to use the flowers you grow to greatest effect. You’ll take home trays of planted seeds and
confidence that your flowers will be affordable as well as gorgeous on the big
day. £49 per person, 10-2 including lunch

17 March Spring Propagating with Sara Venn

Our spring propagating workshops last year were so
popular that we doubled the number we’d planned. This year we’ve invited Sara Venn to come and talk about all kinds of propagating, just as your gardens are beginning to wake
up after their winter sleep. From taking
cuttings to splitting perennials, to bringing on plants from seed – come and be
inspired to stop buying expensive plants from the garden centre and to start
bringing on your own.

10-2 including lunch £49 per person

24 March Photography with Heather Edwards

Wonderful garden photographer, Heather has agreed to
come and spend a day teaching people how to really get the most from their
digital cameras. How to play with light
and shapes. Bring that camera you know
you could get more from and spend a day photographing the emerging gardens at
Common Farm in cleverly designed projects to help you learn to ‘see’. 10-2 £49
including lunch.

Workshops
at Common Farm are always designed to be hands on and fun. The groups are kept small with a maximum of
10 people on any one day so places are always limited and it’s worth booking
quickly in order to avoid missing out.

To book please
go to our website www.commonfarmflowers.com

or e-mail georgie@common-farm.com,

or call 08458 946 770. Group bookings taken.

All workshops will take place at Common Farm,
Wincanton. All prices quoted are per
person.

Best wishes, Georgie
Newbery & Fabrizio Boccha

Using social media to promote your business (and cakes)

2011-11-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today's workshop was all about

How to use Social Media sites (twitter, facebook etc) to promote your business.

To me such a thing seems a total no-brainer: they're free, I control all the content being posted on my

behalf and never in the history of the world has there been a better opportunity to promote and market

a business in exactly the terms I want to exactly the demographic I'm looking for.

(Also, let's face it, Twitter's the more fun than a picnic and on it I've found so much more than customers:

friends, colleagues, supporters, people to take workshops here at Common Farm, people to come to workshops here at Common Farm....

So today that lovely @SparkyBakewell and I tidied the flower table, lit the fire, made some soup

and welcomed eight digital migrants (you see I DO concentrate Sparky) in to see if we couldn't inspire them to take up the challenge of promoting what they do on Twitter, Facebook, through blogs and turning their websites into something intriguing-something people would look at week by week just to see if they've posted new and interesting goodies...

Today we had Clare Tupman (sculptor), Tessa Coleman (artist), Helena Drysdale (writer),

Maymie White and two of her colleagues from Scott Williams (the most glamorous, high end,

holiday villa rental company there is - have a look at their website and just dream!),

Sara Kirkby, who, as anyone who reads this blog regularly will know is the queen of vintage china

(and not a bad stylist non plus), and Jessie Patterson, NLP practitioner, Common Farm workshop

leader, and all round exceptional egg.

And they talked and they argued and they said 'But Twitter's all about people drinking tea with their breakfast! - Who cares?' And @SparkyBakewell and I showed them that Twitter is about so much more,

how Common Farm Flowers wouldn't BE a business without the support and enthusiasm of my

Twitter followers - how Twitter has brought us press, show space, interviews, features (and niether of us has bought a newspaper for weeks when all the news we need is fed direct to us free through Twitter.)

Bon, enough about the workshop - I promised to post the

Recipes

for what we ate:

There were ten of us for lunch so all these recipes will serve that many people.

Roast beetroot soup with creme fraiche and crispy sage leaves

I used yellow beetroot from the garden, I think it's called Golden Sunrise, I almost certainly got the seed from Marshalls.

I roasted about 6 good sized yellow beetroot whole and in their skins for an hour and a half at 150 degrees.

Then, in a deep cast iron pan, I fried off slowly two fat onions, four carrots roughly chopped and a handful of celery.

(I'd never make a cookery writer would I? Not v good on the exact quantities - but have a go,

my cooking is anything but an exact science.)

I then added the beetroot (peeled and roughly chopped) to the onions etc, covered with about a litre of chicken stock and simmered for twenty mins or so.

Meanwhile I poured perhaps half a centimetre of sunflower oil into a pan and when it was good and hot I dropped lots of fresh sage leaves into the oil and they fizzed up so pleasingly and the scent of the sage oil was heaven and hey presto, in about a minute I had delicious, crunchy sage crisps which I drained on a bit of kitchen roll.

When it came to serving the soup I garnished it with a dollop of creme fraiche and a few of these crispy sage leaves.

Then we had local cheeses including Keens cheddar from this village, salad from Charles Dowding (in the next village), and white sourdough bread from At The Chapel in Bruton.

And then it was time for spiced apple and ginger muffins (enough of this healthy stuff - we needed sugar for our poor brains!)

Ingredients:

Chunk fresh ginger roughly chopped

5 eggs

8 oz flour

8 oz sugar

8 oz butter

4 oz desiccated coconut

teaspoon vanilla essence

teaspoon ground cinnamon

teaspoon baking powder

4 peeled apples (I used Blenheim Orange from the tree outside the kitchen door)

2 tablespoons of milk

preheat oven to 180

Put all ingredients in the whizzer & pulse until the mix is smooth (ish - never going to be that smooth when filled with fresh apple and ginger)

Pop mix into muffin cases in trays & pop in oven for 20 minutes. You'll know when they're done because you'll smell them! They take a little longer than usual cupcakes etc because of the fresh apple.

et voila!

Our NEXT workshop here at Common Farm will be with that wonderful Emma Bond

of the Bath Gardening School.

She's here on 15th November helping people to come to grips with their

niggling garden design problems.

There are spaces still available so why not take pics of your garden, a few rough

measurements, and bring along your ideas to a workshop here at Common Farm outside Wincanton.

You'll go away inspired, confident, warned about potential pitfalls, and hopefully with an

actual plan which you will have drawn yourself of how you are going to turn your

garden into the haven YOU desire.

Workshop 15 November, 10-2, £49 per head, including lunch.

Go on - treat yourself (or better still, get someone to treat you as an early Christmas present -

I PROMISE there'll be cake...)

email georgie@common-farm.com to book your place

Everlasting willow wreaths

2011-10-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

Goodness but I've been an unfaithful blogger recently. You can blame pressure of work, those still unplanted tulips, half term even... I say I'm just darned disorganised & need to make more lists for myself!

Bon, here's a bit on what we have been up to.

Fabrizio's been making his famous everlasting willow wreaths.

And I've been dressing them for autumn.

The willow is all cut from the five or six kinds we struck for free in our meadow when we first moved here from off cuts begged from neighbours and friends. At this time of year their leaves fall and we see their amazing mix of coloured stems: dark red to bright green, from flaming orange to my favourite lemony yellow.

The willow was planted six years ago and we cut our first harvest from it last winter. Fabrizio's moved on to the next block of trees to cut this year's and so it'll go on - a sort of coppicing which will eventually encourage amazing thick trunked trees with stunning coloured new growth every year.

The wreaths last from one year to the next: starting out heavy and strong and eventually drying to more brittle circles, but just as good to dress for any celebration at any time of the year.

The ones we're making now I'm dressing for autumn, with crab apples and old man's beard, seed heads from the garden and berries from the hedge. I wire these little garlands and attach them loosely to the willow wreaths so that they'll be easy to remove when they begin to look tired or the occasion demands a new dress.

The pics here are taken by that genius with the camera Heather Edwards or @upwiththelark as she's known around these parts (and on Twitter).

To order wreaths from us now or for Christmas

please go through our website www.commonfarmflowers.com

£42 inc p&p

Or come and find us tomorrow and friday (27,28 Oct) at the RNLI

Michaelmas Fair held at Port Regis, Motcombe, Shaftesbury where we'll have

wreaths, workshops and especially made for us stoneware in abundance -

Christmas present anybody?

Woops!

Forgot to add the updated workshop listings for activities we have planned here at Common Farm Flowers.

common farm flowers

As recommended by SarahRaven in the Telegraph on September 10, 2011

For a

DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT,

why not give a day at one of our

WORKSHOPS at Common Farm

Autumn 2011/Spring 2012

1Nov– Using Facebook & Twitter to promote your business withLucy Carrington – Sold Out

4Nov- Church flowers from your garden with Georgie

Come and decorate St John’s Church Charlton Musgrovewith Georgie who will give you all sorts of tips about how to make the most ofyour garden flowers and foliage in a church setting.

10-2 £49 including lunch

15Nov- Principles of Garden Design with Emma Bond of the BathGardening School

Bring your niggling garden design problems and letEmma show you how to design your own solutions. You’ll take your own plan home along withlots of clever solutions and inspiration to make the garden you’ve always knownyou could put together if only you knew how. 10-2, £49 inc lunch.

26Nov- Discover what you really really want with JessiePatterson

Feeling dissatisfied with life? Feeling that there’ssomething missing that would make your life work better for you if only youknow how to identify the problem? Treatyourself to a day of self-discovery with NLP practitioner Jessie Patterson.

10-4 £75 including lunch. Paper, glue and scissorsall provided....

29Nov- Energising Raw Food workshop with Colette Woods

With demonstrations and tastings Colette Woods willtake you through all sorts of recipes for a healthier lifestyle. From delicious chocolate ‘cake’ that you canhave for breakfast to mouth watering ‘lasagne’, Colette will talk about all thebenefits of a raw food diet as well as demonstrate how delicious that diet canbe. Detox BEFORE Christmas... 10-3 £75 including lunch.

10,12, 13- Dec- Christmas decorations from your gardenwith Georgie and Fabrizio

Make your own everlasting willow wreath for yourfront door and deck it with gorgeous Christmas goodies. Learn how to and make your own Christmasgarland, or candle studded wreath for the table. 10-2. £49 including lunch andall materials.

2012

14Jan- Fruit tree management with Sara Venn.

Come and learn planting, pruning and espalieringfruit trees with Sara Venn (who brought up those amazing trees featured inWestminster Abbey last April). This is a practical course in which you’ll beencouraged to attack our fruit trees with your loppers so that when you go hometo prune yours you’ll know what you’re doing. We’ll end the day with fireworks in the orchard – A Wassailling we willgo...

10-4 £65 including lunch.

7Feb – Garden Design with Louise Dowding

If you couldn’t come to Emma’s course in Novemberbut would like to know more about garden design for the resolution of your ownsticky problems then a day with plants woman and designer Louise Dowding mightbe the answer you’re looking for. Anyonewho’s seen her wonderful garden in Martock will know what an eye she has. Perhaps she could inspire you to make a gardenas beautiful...

10-2 £49 inc lunch.

25^thFeb – Wedding Flowers with Georgie

Wedding flowers can be devilishly expensive. Whether for yourself or for a friend, why notcut your costs by planting a wonderful cuttings garden to use for weddingflowers? Flower farmer and florist,Georgie Newbery will talk you through bringing on your garden and give yougreat tips for how to use the flowers you grow to greatest effect. You’ll take home trays of planted seeds andconfidence that your flowers will be affordable as well as gorgeous on the bigday.

17March Spring Propagating with Sara Venn

Our spring propagating workshops last year were sopopular that we doubled the number we’d planned. This year we’ve invited Sara Venn to come andtalk about all kinds of propagating, just as your gardens are beginning to wakeup after their winter sleep. From takingcuttings to splitting perennials, to bringing on plants from seed – come and beinspired to stop buying expensive plants from the garden centre and to startbringing on your own.

24March Photography with Heather Edwards

Wonderful garden photographer, Heather has agreed tocome and spend a day teaching people how to really get the most from theirdigital cameras. How to play with lightand shapes. Bring that camera you knowyou could get more from and spend a day photographing the emerging gardens atCommon Farm in cleverly designed projects to help you learn to ‘see’. 10-2 £49including lunch.

Workshopsat Common Farm are always designed to be hands on and fun. The groups are kept small with a maximum of10 people on any one day so places are always limited and it’s worth bookingquickly in order to avoid missing out.

For more details, prices, times & to book pleasego to our website www.commonfarmflowers.com

or e-mail georgie@common-farm.com. Group bookings taken.

All workshops will take place at Common Farm,Wincanton. All prices quoted are perperson.

Best wishes, Georgie Newbery & Fabrizio Boccha

Propagating - not such a complicated business

2011-10-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

PROPAGATING WITH SARA VENN

As you can see, I've been INSPIRED by Sara's seed collecting antics:

really, when you see what you collect in one or two spent flower heads you realise those

seed companies are onto a jolly good wicket! #respect.

What a treat! A week or so ago Sara Venn (@SaraLimback on Twitter - follow her for the BEST horticultural tips) came all the way from the HOME COUNTIES! (far indeed from sunny Somerset) to teach a little group of us about PROPAGATING. What a clever girl she is. I mean, you get star gardeners, you get famous scientific horticulturalists and then you get plain speaking, debunking, educatedly opinionated, KNOWLEDGEABLE people like Sara. She's been earning her living growing and propagating for over ten years and she spent a DELIGHTFUL day telling us in that gorgeous, generous way she has everything she knows about growing plants from cuttings and from seed.

The workshop was supposed to feature hardwood cuttings, but, sensible woman, Sara said,

'Look, it's still boiling hot out there and the season's hardly over, so we'll take semi-hardwood cuttings.' And out we all tootled, into, in fact, the first rain we'd had for a month (there's been none since to speak of neither I must say). Perfect cuttings taking weather. Perfect!

Bad pic demonstrating a sweet pea growing trial. I've put HALF my

sweet peas (new bought seed all from Kings of Coggeshall) into root trainers

to survive the winter. I'll put the other half, bought from the same people in in February.

We'll see which flowers first.

Encouraged by head gardener Ursula of Easton Walled Gardens in Nottinghamshire (and by Sara,)

I've also harvested seed from our huge sweet pea crop to see if it comes back true.

I'm going to plant it in February with the other bought seed.

I'll report back, I promise.

And this is where I really started to enjoy myself. Usually here at Common Farm Fabrizio or I teach the workshops ourselves, and clean the house up and prep the lunch etc etc etc. But on this day Fab and I were pupils too and what fun the learning was. We all skipped about the cuttings garden, paper bags in one hand for seed collecting, plastic bags in the other (squirted with water inside - good tip) for the semi-hardwood cuttings. Smoke bush, snowball bush, black elder... I have POTS of cuttings now being carefully slightly ignored in the mess that is the end of season cold frame. The only bad thing about the whole day was that we were having so much fun that I forgot/never had time to take photographs of Sara as she taught.

And she was good.

I loved the way she'd have a little soapbox moment from time to time - on Peat, for example, and how unnecessary it is as a growing medium, or on especially expensive seed compost, and how unnecessary it is too. She de-bunked and un-complicated everything we need to know about propagating all day long. No question was too much for her, no horticultural subject beyond her ken. So delighted were Fabrizio & I with her strength of knowledge that we've invited her back to teach pruning apple trees (and espaliering them) on 14th January, more propagating on the 17th March and planting and maintaining a herb garden on the 21st April so don't hold back on booking THOSE days if they tickle your fancy (bookings via e-mail through georgie@common-farm.com - great Christmas presents for people who've got everything but would still like to learn!)

Inspired by Sara I didn't just take cuttings from my shrubs, but from my Salvias and

Chrysanthemums too.

Most important points I remember from the day:

DO disinfect re-cycled gardening pots.
DO dip your secateurs in disinfectant from time to time and keep them SHARP.
You don't HAVE to take cuttings with a sharp knife - SHARP secateurs will do (she, like me, cuts her thumb off (almost) every time she tries to take cuttings with a knife.)
DO take cuttings JUST below a node (cut straight across so that you know this is the bottom), and cut the top two or three nodes up at an angle, so you know that that's the top.
You don't HAVE to use hormone rooting powder (she never has.)
I loved the MONEY SAVING tips of the day. Hormone rooting powder's expensive!

But most of all she said 'LISTEN TO YOUR INSTINCT!' and 'Plants flourish best when treated to mildly benign neglect.' i.e. don't fuss, leave things to do their thing, and they'll work or not. Take ten cuttings and you might get two rooted. Plant a whole seed packet and some of them will germinate. If you get too many seedlings/rooted cuttings bring them to the Charlton Musgrove charity plant sale on the 2nd Saturday next May.

It was her matter of factness (not a phrase, I do know) that was reassuring, inspiring, and made us all, I hope, feel that the sky's the limit with our horticultural ambitions. I can't wait till she comes back next Jan.

I took seed heads from my Ammi Visnaga AND my Bronze Fennel - both stalwarts of my cuttings garden.

And why not too of my lovely Cosmos Psychic White that's still flowering four months since I began cutting it in early July.

And in other news:

Fabrizio's started making the lovely willow wreaths we dress for Christmas.

To order contact georgie@common-farm.com - details soon to be uploaded

on our website www.commonfarmflowers.com.

He makes willow hearts too.

And we did the flowers for a big birthday party at

Berry Bros in St James's on Friday. For years I used to work at the London Library

around the corner from there (oh yes, I have been an lady novelist in my time),

and it was odd appearing on a Friday night laden with flowers

for a grand dinner in a private dining room in an exquisite 18th century townhouse when years ago

I'd have been drinking red wine & eating peanuts with the likes of Giles Milton and John O'Farrell

in a now gone bust wine bar round the corner.

Proud florist

Buttonhole place names

Those dahlias still flowering

When I'm rich I'm going to give a dinner here.

For much better photographs of Common Farm this past week have a look at

Heather Edwards' pics - I love what she does with our

cut flower arrangements, with the garden, with the willow...

Unsung Heroes of the Cuttings Garden

2011-09-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

Roses, paeonies and dahlias may be the divas of the cuttings garden, but I ask you, where would any of those show offs be without their supporting cast? Even sweet peas - which I do tend to put in their place by massing rather than treating them as precious people allowed their own little aria - I think do better with some background help them really sing.

Here are a few of my favourites from the flower farmer's chorus line. I took the pics this morning so there are some missing - they've died backstage after a long summer of performing, but I will give them a mention so they know they aren't forgotten.

When I plan my cuttings garden I do think a little bit about colour. Rather than just planting random things that tickle my fancy there IS a plan (you may not think it to look at the place), and my plan does always include a lot of white. This isn't just because we are florists for lots of weddings, but because white is often a fantastic background colour for others to be painted on. This Cosmos Psychic White is a really pretty double which has performed and performed for us this year. I didn't grow any other Cosmos because I was bored with the reds and pinks which I get more from with my dahlias, but I've been picking these lovely dancing white flowers on their useful long stems since mid July, and while they aren't perhaps as prolific now as they were at the beginning of September, I still take a bucketful in to the house to use in our bouquets almost every day.

Still on the white theme - this tiny patch - probably only six plants - of white snapdragons have flowered and flowered for months. They give a little edgy structure to a bouquet, in the same way as the Bells of Ireland do, and for any bouquet that ISn't all shouting dahlia, something more subtle, more elegant, less showy, then these Snapdragons always get a place as a supporting role.

I haven't really started cutting these yet - can you guess what they are? Yes, Asparagus fronds - a great staple for the home-growing florist - providing lots of lunch in May and June, and lovely turning yellow colour in October for bouquets. As the quantity of flowers we have available dies down I turn back to foliage for interest, and these gorgeous dancing fronds never fail to make a pretty frame for late dahlias or chrysanths.

Perhaps my favourite workhorse of the cut flower garden: bronze fennel. Cuts and cuts and cuts and cuts. Tall for big arrangements, plates of colour to frame little friends - mixes in with whites and pales as happily as funking it up with the dahlias. It works as a windbreak, self-seeds, is perennial: what more can the flower farmer ask? I only have about 10 plants and they are plenty (for this year). I'll dig up their seedlings as they come next spring and plant another wind break with them. When we cut the garden back in the autumn I use the stalks to stuff roast chicken and when making stock: lovely anniseedy scent great with a broiling chook.

Ammi. Just grow it. Height, breadth, constant flowering, structure in a bouquet, long lasting as a cut flower. I've planted some already in the (rather hot today) poly tunnel to over-winter and bring me an early crop next year. I'll plant more in the spring: can't have too much ammi when there are weddings to cut for throughout the late summer.

Terrible picture, but I've been cutting cornflowers, both this blue and black ball (dark purple) since late May. They are highlights, spots of colour, a little extra in a bouquet that might otherwise be bland. Since floristry (like any other art) is really about colour, light and texture rather than what flowers are actually used, these are unfailingly useful if you need to make a dot at the epicentre of your golden section. I am allergic to things being too carefully balanced and equal: cornflowers are a brilliant way to just move the focus of a bouquet so that the arrangement is more pleasing to the eye.

Surprise guest. This little annual lemon coloured chrysanth really struggled to get going. I ended up with only three plants. And when she started flowering I wondered if I'd ever use her. But she's been cut and cut and cut - I've learned that a little lemon can go a very long way in all sorts of bouquets, whether to break up the richness of a bevvy of dark dahlias, or to echo the tiny yellow at the heart of Rosa Compassion or those wonderful Asters I grew called Florette Champagne. They stand in water for a week or more: when the rest of the bouquet is long strewn on the compost heap these little dancers are still going strong (so long as the vase water's kept clean & the ends of her stems cut often enough).

I cut flowering herbs all year round: bronze fennel, this garlic chive (60cms & stands in water for a fortnight), parsley gone to seed, ordinary chives in spring to mix in with other, showier alliums. Yesterday I cut flowering coriander to add to a bouquet of sunflowers and other goodies....

Never underestimate the usefulness of calendula - not only heaven in salads and tea, as you can see above, nor just comfort for the grieving (according to the language of flowers), but a spot of orange goes a long way in an autumnal bouquet. I have been cutting this bed of calendula since June and won't stop until I really need the space for planting out my hardy annual seedlings to overwinter where they were. And next year I'll have thousands of calendula plants all over the garden, some of which I'll keep, but a lot of which will go to our charity plant sale held at Charlton Musgrove Village Hall the second saturday in May.

And last but by no means least the heavenly waving fronds of Verbena Bonariensis. It's sposed to be perennial: for me it self-seeds about the place and I always plant more. As highlights between the dahlias there is nothing more perfect and it flowers through the first frosts to remain as structure in the garden, as well as the bouquet, all through the winter long.

So happy gardening one and all - and don't forget - since this lovely weather's supposed to last a week or more it's worth going out and giving all your repeat flowerers a really ruthless deadhead then our garden will give you a final flourish until that snow they're threatening us with... They are! Haven't you heard them?

Propagating workshop - 4 Oct here at Common Farm

2011-09-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Please welcome guest blogger Sara Venn who'll be hosting a propagating workshop here at Common Farm Flowers on 4th October - come along and learn.

AN Adventure at Common Farm Flowers

On 4th October I will be heading a workshop that will discover the wonders of autumn propagation of plants and how to go about doing it.

Propagation is like alchemy to those with a passion for plants. It enables you to grow new plants, increase your stock of plants you already have and love, and beg and borrow small pieces of plants you covert to grow on. I think many think its dark magic and hard to do, but the reality is that with a small amount of knowledge and the correct equipment, its possible for all to achieve.

So what will we be doing on October 4th? Well, some basics such as hardwood and semi-hardwood cuttings to begin with, using the wonders of the Common Farm garden. We will walk around the garden and look at the best ways of propagating what is there,as well as looking out for any plants that may have seed heads that could be plundered. We will also look at the many plants that if sown from seed in the autumn will give an earlier show in the following season, as well those that need sowing from seed and leaving outside to give them the cold that they need to begin the germination process. I also will spend some time talking about splitting herbaceous perennials to increase their stock and improve their vigour.

But most importantly, I’d like everyone who is attending to think about what they need for their gardens plant stock to increase and come with questions. Learning how to propagate is only the beginning of a huge journey which will lead to a more interesting and varied garden, a better understanding of what you have in your garden and of what you might like in it and of plants in general.

So I hope to see lots of you on the 4th October, and beseech you to come with questions a plenty and let me share some of my excitement about propagation with you.

Date: 4th October

Place: Common Farm Flowers Wincanton www.commonfarmflowers.com - easy from Bath, Bristol, London (2 miles from A303 - 4 from Gillingham main line station Dorset)

Time: 10-2

Cost: £49 inc DELICIOUS LUNCH made by Georgie Newbery who's not just a handy florist! (cake queen)

Places strictly limited so book quick as you like to make sure of your place.

A bit of a do...

2011-09-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

It's quite a process prepping for a big DO here at Common Farm Flowers. We don't make a cuttings list then call our wholesaler to see if someone else has grown and cut what we want for us. No, we make a cuttings list... and then the work starts.

1 Scrub & disinfect as many flower buckets as are needed. This generally equals a lot because I want the flowers and greenery I cut to have a good, long drink without competition or crowding. I want them to have space to dry off it it's been raining, and I don't want flowers to be bruised by their neighbours. The buckets need scrubbing & disinfecting because bacteria is the ENEMY of the cut flower. I fill the buckets with water & add a smidgin of bleach to the water to keep those nasty bacteria at bay even longer.

2 Start cutting. I do have a cuttings list. eg 40 white cosmos, 40 ammi, 3 delphiniums, 60 cornflowers, 30 sunflowers etc etc.
I cut in spurts. I can't bear the flowers to be out of water for any length of time. They're IN water, stripped of unnecessary folliage, within max ten minutes of being cut. This way the cellulose in the cut end of the stem doesn't have time to seal over and prevent the lickle green cells from drinking water up to the flower head. Since this do requires some really long stemmed flowers I get them into water super quickly because I don't want any of the flowers to even think of wilting.

3 I cut the greenery last, strip the stems ruthlessly of folliage AND any lichen, or loose material, anything that might muddy the flowers' drinking water and bother the system with bacteria. Woody stems are seared for a minute in an inch of BOILING WATER having been split to a length of two or so centimetres, so increasing the surface area for the living stem to drink from. It's all about drink - and cleanliness - and counting. Simple really.

4 This client wanted rose bowls for her flowers. Not necessarily easy when she also wanted candles. So I wrapped well soaked oasis (oh for a biodegradable alternative to oasis!!!!) in cellophane so that it wouldn't dry out too quickly (does happen), and wrapped THAT in wide satin ribbon so's it looked pretty through the cut glass. It's a fiddly, time consuming business but the results are way worth it.

5 From then on it gets simpler - sort of. Rustle up the arrangements and nestle them carefully in moving up to London containers - easier for the table centres than the big pedestal which was almost as tall as me (5ft 2).

6 Everybody pile into the van and off to London town, praying hard all the way that that enormously tall pedestal rangement didn't snap in half on the way.
Don't forget a few buckets of spares to fill in problems when you get there and with which to rustle up the last minute arrangements it's always a pleasure to throw in for the client at the last min (not joking - it IS!)

7 Arrive and install - being relieved that the rangements fit the space noicely, are as fresh and country looking as the client wants. Quickly rustle up those last min arrangements. Admire for one last time that miraculously surviving pedestal and then SCOOT OFF TO THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM to show Bear & Wriggler the dinosoars.

Energising raw food workshops - detox BEFORE Christmas

2011-09-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Please welcome guest blogger Colette Woods who will be taking three energising raw food workshops here at Common Farm Flowers over the Autumn term - the first on 27th September then 18th October and 29th November.

Raw burger - it looks like a burger and tastes nutty, jiucy and delicious.
Come along to the workshop for my special recipe.

Ok, so we’ve had a pretty wet summer which has left many of us a bit jaded but wouldn’t it be nice to charge into winter feeling full of beans? You may think eating a load of vegetables is too much like hard work, but on the raw food workshop I’ll show you how to make the most delicious meals that will help you feel healthy and look glowing, and the great news is they’re incredibly quick to make. With the help of a blender you will be able to whip up a meal in less time than you would need to heat up a ‘convenience’ meal - and mine will taste better!

I’ll show you how to incorporate more nutrient dense food into your existing diet. I have been eating a high raw food diet for many years and know how good it can make you feel. The way it does this is by increasing the alkaline in your body which in turn helps you stay healthy.

Chocolate has always been a dirty word in the eyes of the slimming world but did you know that raw chocolate is packed with minerals, vitamins and antioxidants? It is loaded with magnesium which is a natural mood enhancer – great for a ‘time of the month’ pick me up. Most of the chocolate you buy in the shops has large amounts of sugar and fat added to it, but raw chocolate has nowhere near the amount of calories because its dairy free, made with pure cacoa and not much else. It’s also fabulous for the skin. One of the recipes I’ll show you how to make is a most delicious chocolate cake which, believe it or not, you can eat for breakfast!

This chocolate cake is out of this world

All the food I prepare on the workshop is dairy, gluten and refined sugar free and utterly delicious.

So come along and spend a cheery day at Common Farm near Wincanton. You’ll leave, I hope, inspired to use all the delicious recipes and hot raw food tips I’ll give you.

Workshops: 27th September, 18th October, 29th November
All take place at: Common Farm, Wincanton, Somerset
Time: 10-3
Cost: £75 per person
You take home: inspiration, determination, recipes, ideas, and lots more knowledge than you had before about what raw food can do for you...

To book: use the contact page on www.commonfarmflowers.com

THANKYOU! and hope to see you soon.

Freshly made lasagne made with raw, healthful, health-giving ingredients...

workshops at common farm flowers - autumn term 2011

2011-09-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

common farm flowers

WORKSHOPS: Autumn term 2011

For all workshops please book well in advance.

e-mail Georgie on georgie@common-farm.com

telephone 08458 946770

27 Sept, 18 Oct, 29 Nov - Energising Raw Food workshop with Colette Woods

Come & discover how delicious the health-giving benefits of eating raw food can be. Colette swears by the transforming effects of eating a raw food diet and has used her abilities as a talented and experienced cook to develop lots of fabulous recipes using raw ingredients which she will share with you on the day. 10-3pm. £75 inc. lunch, recipes & lots of lovely tastings.

4 Oct - Propagating Hardwood Cuttings with Sarah Venn.

While building her new nursery venture, The Physic Garden, which specialises in perennial herbs and interesting edible plants Sarah also works for a nursery growing large, container-grown plants. Come and spend a day learning all about taking hardwood cuttings and other winter propagating tips with Sarah at Common Farm near Wincanton. Bring some seed from your garden or just learn about seed collection from ours. 10-2 £49 including delish lunch, cake, & goodies to take home.

1 Nov - Promote Your Business Using Social Networking Sites with Georgie and web content consultant Sparky Bakewell.

With no marketing or PR budget Common Farm Flowers would not be a functioning business without the use of social networking sites which has brought them press, great opportunities as well as a huge client base they wouldn't have had otherwise. Come & learn how to promote your business using Twitter & Facebook as well as how to make the MOST of your website. £49 10-2 inc. delicious lunch.

4 Nov - Church flowers from your garden with Georgie.

Come & decorate St John’s Church, Charlton Musgrove with flowers and foliage from Common Farm Flowers. Let Georgie take you through ways to make stunning church flower arrangements from your own garden at any time of year. Focusing on cutting and conditioning your plant material in order to make the most of it, Georgie will hopefully de-bunk a few of the ‘must/must nots’ of church flower arranging and send you home confident that what you dress your church with will not only stun the congregation, but last a good long time too. 10-2 £49 inc. delicious lunch.

8 Nov - Put your garden to bed for the winter with Georgie.

Come & spend a day learning tips for keeping your garden snug for the winter. Remembering that wildlife need cover too, Georgie will take you through what she does to help ensure her less hardy friends survive the frost, her un-heated greenhouse remains useful throughout the cold months, how to protect seedlings and cuttings from the worst of the weather, and make sure that your next season flowers with a great show. 10-2 £49 inc. delicious lunch.

15 Nov - Principles of Garden Design with Emma Bond of the Bath Gardening School.

Passionate about plants and about helping people achieve the dreams they have for their gardens, Emma will take us through the principles of garden design. Bring your own niggling design problems. A landscape designer for over 10 years Emma Bond will show us how to look at our gardens as a whole. 10-2 £49 inc. delicious lunch.

26 Nov- Discover what you really really want with Jessie Patterson.

Back by popular demand, Jessie Patterson has been booked to teach another wonderful ‘Discovering your Purpose’ workshop. Come & spend a day treating yourself to a look at who you are and what you do: the activities are great fun and their results unexpected. At the end of the day you will be tired because you’ll have worked hard, but as the days and weeks go by afterwards little pennies keep on dropping and you’ll find yourself so much more determined and focussed and sensibly conscious of what YOU need in order to make the most of YOU. 10-4 £75 inc. delicious lunch & lots of cake.

10, 12, 13- Dec- Christmas decorations from your garden with Georgie and Fabrizio.

Deck your halls with your own home-made Christmas decorations. Using all sorts of home-grown goodies Georgie & Fabrizio will help you wreath your houses in Christmas cheer. £49 inc delish lunch & ingredients for the decorations you’ll make and take home with you.

All workshops will take place at Common Farm, Wincanton
To book your place e-mail Georgie on georgie@common-farm.com
Or telephone 08458 946 770

Best wishes, Georgie Newbery & Fabrizio Boccha

Bronze medal winning garden (ahem!)

2011-09-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Common Farm Flowers' first ever show garden.

What do you think?

4x6 metres framed in railway sleepers & filled with clay.

Fabrizio made this exquisite shed espeshialllie - we're taking offers....

Just Ammi

I'm dead partial to this aster 'florette champagne'

and this dahlia 'Magenta Star'

Twas sposed to be a cuttings garden throughout the year -

wherefore the seedlings and space for newly planted hardy annuals.

People liked these acidanthera a lot.

I made a big bouquet of flowers to match those growing in the garden

and put them in this fine vintage bucket.

I'm the one in the french blue linen apron talking

to lovely number 1 garden designer Jo Thompson.

& regardes-moi ca - a bronze medal.

Lades & gents we are at the Bath&West showground, National Gardening Show until Sunday.

Building a show garden

2011-08-31T00:40:00.000-07:00

So much more than just marking out a space & filling it with plants.

The Site

The railway sleepers

The space

Wait for earth

Earth...

The learning curve is steep.

The problem for us is that Common Farm Flowers is really just Fabrizio & me slaving away in the garden. There's no spare man power to hand. Our show garden is therefore made up of spare plants that we've been lining up in the yard in an approximation of a small cut flower garden. Which brings me to the next problem. Our plants were all stood in rows in the yard on the GROUND! Our show garden is raised 2 feet IN a box made of railway sleepers and so the angles are all different and you see it from a different point of view.

Bon, Fabrizio's shed is a work of art and his stone paths an inspiration in themselves.

I'm off shortly to finish the main planting & then let the tweaking & the ruining of it begin!

But before that I need to finish all the literature we've put together as handouts for the show. After all, we want people to take something away with them so that they remember us, don't we? Otherwise what's the point?

& so we now have a list of workshops for the Autumn Term.

common farm flowers

WORKSHOPS: Autumn term 2011

27 Sept- Energising Raw Food workshop with Colette Woods
4 Oct- Propagating Hardwood Cuttings with Sarah Venn
18 Oct- Energising Raw Food workshop with Colette Woods
1 Nov- Promote Your Business Using Social Networking Sites with Georgie and Sparky Bakewell
4 Nov- Church flowers from your garden with Georgie
8 Nov- Put your garden to bed for the winter with Georgie
15 Nov- Principles of Garden Design with Emma Bond of the Bath Gardening School
26 Nov- Discover what you really really want with Jessie Patterson
29Nov- Energising Raw Food workshop with Colette Woods
10, 12, 13- Dec- Christmas decorations from your garden with Georgie and Fabrizio

For more details, prices, times & to book please go to our website www.commonfarmflowers.com

All workshops will take place at Common Farm, Wincanton
Best wishes, Georgie Newbery & Fabrizio Boccha

Of course now I need to add all this plus times etc to the website but ONE THING AT A TIME! At least we have the list. In case any of YOU dear readers are interested in the above workshop list then they are all 10-2 inc light lunch, cost £49 except for Jessie Patterson's and Colette Woods' workshops which are 10-3 and £75 (inc lunch). All our workshops feature lots of cake & coffee.

Then we needed to make the flier for the garden.

Common Farm Flowers

Presents

How To Make Your Garden Pay

We started by selling a few sweet peas in a jam jar outside our front door. Our business has grown organically over the past couple of years without any large investment or big loans. We garden organically & recycle as much as possible while trying to make the flowers we love pay for themselves (& us).

This show garden reflects our ethos. The shed’s built from recycled wood & corrugated iron, the water butt is a cut-down oil drum. The fence is made from old scaffolding boards & represents our never ending battle with rabbits. Our raised beds are filled with Revive Compost: recycled, municipal, peat-free - from recycling experts Viridor.

The wildflower strip at the back of this garden represents our wild areas. Fabrizio says, ‘Look after the invertebrates, & the rest of the food chain will look after itself.’ We never use pesticides or herbicides for fear of disturbing the ecosystem. Fabrizio grows wildflowers from locally sourced seed into mature plants before planting them out into the meadow to naturalise. They pay for themselves too: we sell them as part of the bouquets we send by post.

Georgie grows cultivars to match the wildflowers. She grows the plants she loves, & sells them because she has itchy scissor syndrome & cannot leave a flowering plant uncut.
www.commonfarmflowers.com –grown, cut & tied in Somerset.

So that's the story so far. Much work still to do. The National Gardening Show starts Friday 2nd Sept at the Bath & West Showground Shepton Mallet. Please come & see us there or we're going to feel v foolish re all the printing (let alone the garden I must go & finish NOW!)

Have a good day y'all

August Honey Harvest

2011-08-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

Please welcome guest blogger FABRIZIO BOCCHA -

the other half of the Common Farm Flowers Team

First take your supers of honey off your bees' hives. We have two colonies (two hives) currently doing their thing here at Common Farm. They have their own garden, especially planted with comfrey (which they ignore, but which the bumble bees love). I've even dug them a shallow little pond with a beach (true) from which they fetch their water.

The colonies have done extremely well this summer despite the cold and endless rain. We took 20lbs honey off one of them in the spring harvest - the other colony then was just a nucleus taken from a neighbour's hive. Our colonies (like everybody else's round here) have swarmed and swarmed all summer. I like to leave our bees as much as possible and fuss with them as seldom as I can: let them swarm if that's what they really want to do.

Here I am de-capping the honey comb with a sharp, thin-bladed knife. The jug is full of scalding water to keep the knife hot so that it melts the wax. All the windows in the house are closed or the sisters will come and take their honey back - I'm not kidding.

Each uncapped frame of honey is placed into the (Italian) centrifugal honey extractor.

I turn the handle very fast 120 times.

This years honey (40+lbs) has sweat pea aroma/taste to it.

Now we've had their honey off them I've given them back the empty supers

to clean up and prepare for next year.

Next week I'll treat them for Varoa mite and then we'll start feeding them

so that they can build up stores for the winter.

They're still out foraging every day and will do right up until the really cold weather

sets in. Then I'll shut them down for the winter with a mouse guard across their

front door and match sticks between the layers of brood chamber and lid etc to keep the air

circulating. With luck they'll survive the winter and on a warm day in February we'll

see them, out foraging, on the yellow pollen of the pussy willow.

Some flowers Georgie grew - she thinks they're for arranging and for sale - but I know they're really there for the bees - little bastards stung my hand.

What I really really want...

2011-08-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

I'm STILL exhausted (in a good way) after the workshop NLP practitioner Jessie Patterson held here on Saturday.

Ten women, some of whom knew each other, some not, arrived here around 10 am on Saturday morning with their birthdates in mind and five things that mean a lot to them in hand.

By four o'clock we'd all surprised ourselves with what we'd done with these precious things.

It was a fun day, but a brave day too: it's not easy to stand up in front of people you don't necessarily know and find that, though you may only be showing and telling your favourite things, but that they mean so much to you that it's difficult to say anything.

The day went like this:

Coffee & cake & introductions (natch - all workshops at Common Farm feature coffee & cake somewhere along the line).

Then we all introduced the first of our favourite objects - so hard to think why it was so favourite... but mine was a gorgeous enamel flower ring I bought in the south of France years ago. I said I love it because of the French connection, because it's glittery, because it's not expensive but it's lovely, because it reminds me of happy days... by the end of the day I still loved it, but I'd realised that what draws me to it is much simpler...

I think that's what I liked most about this workshop. In retrospect I'm realising that actually the point of it is simplification. Tearing away the guff and the stuffing to find the core things that move us to like, dislike, engage, turn away...

Our next activity was the one I liked best: we took heaps of magazines, a large sheet of paper, a glue stick, and spent an hour cutting out pictures that spoke to us and making a collage. I love my collage so much I'm going to frame it and hang it in the office where it can remind me to keep focussed on what I really really want and not be distracted on my way.

And then things started to get interesting. I told the story of what I saw on my collage. Somebody said, 'Interesting though how all the women are covered up by somebody else, as if there are two people.' And I thought, Yes! I'd cut out lots of pics of gardeners in their gardens or flower shops, but covered them up with pics of more exciting looking women... Who was I? Who do I want to be?

In the afternoon we worked out our numerology numbers. I'm still reeling at how exactly mine described me. Can be impatient? hmmmm.... Not a good team player? Determined. Focussed - oh yes. I can't wait to get the details of what Fabrizio's, the bear's and the wriggler's numbers mean. Turns out Fabrizio and the bear are the same number - no wonder they're like two peas in a pod!

And then we took the rest of our precious things and went through them in pairs. Interesting being asked by a stranger who doesn't know me why things mean so much to me. It really really made me think.

And what I've realised is this: that it is not the gardening per se which I love about my job, it is the making something lovely with the results of it. It is not that my ring reminds me of a holiday or a time or another place that I love, but that it, and my granny's pearls, and my slim volume of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, and my computer are all either small, exquisite things, or, as in the case of my computer, a way for me to make small, exquisite things (oh yes, I will publish my new writing - I will I will I will!)

It seems such a small thing to realise: that tiny exquisitenesses give me great pleasure. But having learned that, I can make sure I don't live without them - and believe me - in my life it would be easy to miss all the exquisite loveliness and become a proper thumping brick outhouse of a country lady. I have been warned. For the sake of my sanity, my marriage, my children and my business, a bit of gorgeousness must always be by my side. Be warned Fabrizio. You may laugh that when I'm day-dreaming it's always abouta glittery shiny thing in a shop...

I've learned a few other things too: that ten people at a workshop means I must have TWO loos scrubbed within an inch of their lives, and that means hoovering the stairs as well... Small but important. Ditto, 10 people means more space needed for the luncheon arrangements - next time clean up the playroom Georgie! And keep buying the lottery tickets so that one day we'll have a huge, dedicated workshop area with comfortable chairs, and roomy tables, and two loos especially built for guests with a teeny shelf on one side where I will always have arranged and exquisite handful of my own home grown cut flowers.

Next What I Really Really Want workshop to be booked in for November 2011 - contact me through www.commonfarmflowers.com to register your interest and I'll let you know as soon as the date is confirmed.

April wedding - April party - April flowers from Common Farm

2011-08-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

Wasn't the weather in April heavenly? Difficult to imagine now as I sit shivering in my office fighting the desire to fire up the central heating although it's mid august!!!!

Bon, so to take you back to those balmy days I thought I'd show you what happens when there's sunshine.

Royal Wedding Party - flowers by Common Farm Flowers

Note the Elsie Florence Vintage China Collection teapots

Our black tulips were stunning mixed with apple blossom,

camassia and forget me nots...

not forgetting those explosions of green which are the flowering

shoots of the just unfurling oak.

A country church bathed in April sunshine -

who wouldn't want to get married in weather like this?

I love a cushion of apple blossom - we have lots of soupieres and rose bowls,

all kinds of unusual containers in which a cushion like this looks

simply stunning.

My favourite April bouquet - a rush of black tulips,

apple blossom, forget-me-nots, shooting honeysuckle and some

black cherry leaf....

I loved making these shot glass posies for Victoria Blashford-Snell (queen of caterers)

the day after the royal wedding while we were being quoted by

Lia Leendertz in the Guardian We LOVED

the Duke & Duches of Cambridge's (tugs forelock) wedding flowers.

Like la duchesse, this country bride for whom I was weilding the florist's wire

was given snowball bush and white lilac too.

Oh yes, we can be on the nail trendwise without even ever knowing it.

To book a consultation and quote for your April wedding contact Georgie through the Common Farm Flowers website. Thankyou!

Roses & Sweet Peas - A July Wedding - the bride wore pink...

2011-08-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

These flowers were done for a wedding in July. All grown, cut and tied by us here at Common Farm Flowers.

The brief was that the bride wanted the flowers to look as though she'd wandered around the garden picking flowers for herself that very morning.

Since she was being married from a friend's house in Exmore we wandered around our garden for her.

The photos were taken by Mitzi de Margary.

The jugs and containers were hired from Elsie Florence Vintage China.

The bridesmaid had a bracelet of flowers

The bride's sister wore this flower festooned hair clip

The bride wore pink and carried Shropshire Lads, Mme Alfre Cariere,

pink larkspur, ivy, honeysuckle...

The groom had a thoroughly over the top buttonhole

His ushers were slightly more circumspect with blue for boys buttonholes

The bride's bouquet: detail

Sweet peas & orlaya grandiflora in an Elsie Florence vintage red & white spotted jug.

Each table had a jug filled with different coloured mixed posies

from the garden at Common Farm Flowers.

To reserve flowers like these or to your own design from Common Farm e-mail

georgie@common-farm.com to book a consultation.

The bride wore a purple satin, sleeveless sheath dress - long -

2011-08-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

and wanted simple flowers, not too blowsy, not too all over the place. She wanted them tight and pretty but with an edge of chic.

This is what we gave her.

Bride's bouquet. She wanted small, tight, individual.

Five little flower girls had these posies.

These are posies for laying on the serving dishes

Buttonholes

There were eighteen of these posy pots to be arranged

down the dinner tables.

All flowers grown, cut and tied here at Common Farm

Hope they're having a wonderfully memorable day.

Love from www.commonfarmflowers.com

How to make money at flower farming

2011-08-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

Jugs of flowers for tomorrow's wedding at Chaffeymoor Grange

The short answer is: DIVERSIFY!

There must be something in the air: all of a sudden there are a rush of people wanting to come and see how we do 'it' here at Common Farm, wanting to know what we plant and why, which perenials and which annuals do best, what foliage is the answer to the flower farmer/florist's dreams. And I find myself being short with my replies. Not, dear reader, because I fear a flurry of competitors setting up their stalls alongside ours in the great green marketplace that is the UK. I think I'm short with people because I have long known, and rediscover every day, that flower farming and floristy are businesses not for making money, but for people who can't imagine enjoying doing anything else as much - no matter how much more it will certainly pay them.

Bouquet sent yesterday to North Devon - grown, cut and tied at Common Farm Flowers

The hours are absurd: 5am to 7.30 most mornings for cutting. A day mixed between floristry and childcare, a little admin (never enough for the desk to be clear), marketing, and stuffing the odd high calorie snack down the gullet always on the hoof. After the children are in bed there's more cutting, more conditioning, or planning, or fighting with Fabrizio over where we should spend our meagre budgets if we are to expand.

Make time for supper and a glass of wine or you WILL go mad

It would be no good at all trying your hand at a business like ours unless you would be doing a lot of it anyway. We started after watching Monty Don in an episode of 'My Dream Farm' (I think that's what it was called), about two girls in Kent who'd rented an acre of land, put a poly tunnel up at one end and had begun flower farming. At the end of the episode old Mont (please excuse the familiar tone SIR) told these girls what they needed to do to get their business up and running more successfully. Apart from launching the website it seemed we already did most of what he suggested. And so it seemed our business was already functioning.

I would grow sweet peas in abundance whether I were flower farming or not - I just can't help myself. My dahlia habit could be described as worrying. My increasing pash for larkspur is taking me the same way. All of these I would grow en masse whether flower farming or not.

I am a bad farmer in that I grow the wrong flowers. My roses aren't all hybrid teas with long stems and evenly designed heads which are the easiest to use in flower arrangements. I don't have enough greenery and so am ridiculously generous with flower heads when sending out bouquets. We have at last begun to supply the wholesale market in Bristol which certainly improves the cash flow - but there are teething problems associated with that too: quantity, quality control etc etc etc.

A Shropshire Lad used for a wrist posy for a bridesmaid - photo by Mitzi de Margary

We are organic, though we don't have organic certification (too expensive Soil Association) and this brings its own problems. We can't spray or kill - I grow achillea as a sacrificial plant & it is munched on by all our predatory insect friends but that doesn't help the rust on the Bells of Ireland or the mildew elsewhere. A management consultant would tell us that our business is never going to get anywhere - it's too finite a space/product to be able to grow enough to make any real money.

I think, too, it's really worth thinking about what your garden's for. We have an area outside the kitchen door of grass surrounded by horrible long narrow beds which flower in abundance in the early spring and which I cut ruthlessly (I can't see a plant in flower but want to cut it). This is our 'garden', the place I should have as a lovely fragrant elegant place full of light and clever massing. One day I'll pay somebody else to do that for me. I am not that kind of gardener.

12 tonnes of Revive compost (peat free) from Viridor arrives at Common Farm.

We fill our raised beds with it directly on top of our horrid blue clay

and then mulch from time to time to enrich it.

Give me the regularly spaced raised beds in our potager surrounding the blessed ugliness of our polytunnel and to me THAT's the garden I like.

That's the garden I can't keep away from. It's not designed. It's certainly not beautiful, it often has very few flowers in it (I cut them all the time). But this is where I go at 5am on a summer's morning, cup of tea in one hand, florist's scissors in the other. And I cut and tie and cut and tie and am calm and pleased and love the fact that the self-seeded sunflowers from last year's stock didn't mind being moved (too much) and have come back true (dark brown). So for me my garden is for cutting, not for looking at. I love to look at other people's gardens and admire their forbearance in leaving a mass of roses climbing a wall when I'd have stripped them and sold them to a bride for her wedding. I like to LOOK at other people's gardens. Veddw, Hidcote, Lytes Cary. But I like to cut at mine.

And so I say to people, when they ask what we grow and why, that we grow what we can't help growing and that nothing's too sacred to cut - and that if they like the idea then they should do the same. No matter what we plant, the garden at 5am on a limpid June morning has to have a more irresistible allure than the cosy bed. If that is the case then you may as well put your garden to making money because you'll be out in it anyway, no matter if it pays you to be there or not.

We started off with jamjars of sweet peas for sale outside our front gate. Our little acre and a half (so far under cultivation) now keeps us sweetly scented, if not in new clothes from an ordinary shop. There's no summer holiday to be had (much to the Bear's chagrin).

So my answer to those of you who want to know what we grow and why is this:

Look at your own ground and what grows well in it. Look at your own weather patterns, season length, wind direction, and grow what you love so much that you would cut it all anyway and have it jarred and cofffee potted up all over your own house if you couldn't find a market for it.

Cake, Scones & Clotted Cream

2011-08-07T06:26:00.000-07:00

It's bin a busy week here at Common Farm. On Monday we sent 1000 sweet peas to market and lots of bouquets out in the post.

QC Tuesday group with their posies

On Tuesday the Queen Camel Tuesday Group (ex WI) came for a couple of hours tour, cake and making posies.

On Wednesday we sent out another 1000 sweet peas and the childer and I nipped up to Monmouth to see my niece on her 1st birthday.

On Thursday Fabrizio really got on with the shed he's building for our show garden at the National Gardening Show (Bath & West showground, 2,3,4 Sept). My mum had kindly dug up a good selection of wild flower plugs for us so I've added them to our meagre stock of plants for said so garden which is laid out in our yard and gets added to from time to time.

And we sent vintage colours sweet peas to Stems Design in Huddersfield for a wedding they'd designed.

On Friday there were sweet peas cut for local weddings a gogo and sunflowers and dahlias for Jenny at Divine Wines in Wincanton and other local dignitaries.

On Saturday I had a melt down and decided this is all too much and we ought to sell up and go and live in a smaller house with a much smaller garden and get ordinary jobs which might actually pay the bills.

So today Fabrizio took the children to put up a tent in the gaerde (this year's holiday destination - extreme staycationing!), took the children to church, I did 19 loads of laundry, weeded the Gilly beds, started clearing the spent calendula, planted some autumn leafy veg...

I don't feel like chucking in the towel any more. The future looks calmer. Though right now there's a vicious wind lashing storm of heavy rain thundering down. The poor dog's shivering under the bookshelf in my office for fear of it. I daren't go out and inspect the damage to the sweet peas. We have an order for 1000 to go to market tomorrow morning. And 100s more to post. Who'd be a flower farmer? Rabbits schmabbits: the weather is our worst enemy of all.

View from the back door right now

EXTRAS!

Anybody like to help us with wildflower plug plants for our show garden don't hesitate. I'm putting together the literature this week so there's still room for another company's logo to be added to Viridor's (they've sponsored our garden to the tune of 16 tonnes of peat free municipal green waste Revive compost).

If you have a group and would like a relaxed tour of the gardens here at Common Farm, a slice of five star Vic sponge, and a little posy workshop then get in touch via our website. I LOVE a group tour.

The Thankyou Letter

2011-07-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Please forgive me for this showing off - but I've never had such a nice thankyou letter in my whole life and so I feel OBLIGED (in a showy offy sort of way) to share it. I'm sorry about the not-brilliant quality of the photographs - this lovely bride says she'll send me a cd of flowery pics from her official photographer - in the mean while this is all I have. I do love the print she sent me of herself and the groom walking back down the aisle. Such happy faces!

Happy couple - don't you LOVE her retro dress & peep-toe shoes?

Dear Georgie,

A long overdue card to say a sincere thankyou for all your hard work towards our wedding. The flowers looked so, so lovely. I couldn't have asked for more. I wanted natural, country-garden flowers, and you gave me them in abundance!

I loved all the flowers, but have to make special mention of the kissing gate, that looked so pretty, and of course the table arrangements at the reception, which hit the perfect note - relaxed and stunning at the same time. The little jam jar up with the Madonna did not go unnoticed... and the lovely pew ends... and of course my beautiful bouquet... I could go on and on!

Here's me having only just tied the bouquet about an hour before the wedding.

Mostly Shropshire Lad roses - have you heard me rapturise about them before?

It was also a real pleasure to work with you leading up to the wedding. In particular I enjoyed the updates on how the flowers were doing ('The cornflowers are coming on...' etc) Our meeting, phone calls and e-mail correspondence always inspired me with confidence and I very much apprecieated your relaxed friendly manner - so thank you for that too.

Thankyou again for helping create such a memorable and happy day. We would recommend your business without hesitation, and I hope I will have occasion to turn to you in the future for any flower needs.

With warm wishes,

Eleanor

We dressed the kissing gate with hornbeam, roses, and ox eye daisies - again

only about an hour before the service so that they were FRESH as a daisy and

really did look as if they were growing around the lovely wrought iron shape of it.

What I really really want...

2011-07-25T06:13:00.000-07:00

Oh the list is soooooo long. What I really really neeeeeeeed in fact is someone to come along and help me sort the wheat from the chaff of my longings; someone who can help me not only identify where I want to go in life but how I'm going to get there. No mean ask I can tell you.

My problem is that I rush about at so many miles an hour that I have no time to think. I nurture endless non-specific longings but never give myself the time to actually sit down and work out what they are. Imagine how much more satisfying life would be (not to mention how much more time I'd have) if I didn't waste it longing for something more... if only I knew what that something was.

But there may be someone to hand who can help me out.

NLP practitioner Jessie Patterson is coming to Common Farm on 20th August to help me and 10 friends find out what it is that we really really want. I've been told to hold on to all the magazines that come my way so that we can spend the first part of the workshop madly tearing out pictures and sticking them onto large pieces of card. These, I'm told, will become the prototype mood boards of each of our futures. I'm to bring along five things that mean a lot to me and my date of birth - ooooh - what shall I bring? A hairgrip (glittery), an apron (I am an apron worshipper), what other three things...? Shall have to think on...

By the end of the day I'm told we'll all have been helped to identify what it is that we really really want and, more importantly, been shown how to find the right path to get there.

Fabrizio's said he'll make us all lunch. If it's a lovely day we'll have it in the orchard.

I won't be able to resist baking a cake.

What do you think? Would you like to come and join in?

Date: 20 August 2011
Time: 10-4
Venue: Common Farm, SE Somerset
Price: £75 inc lunch & all the trimmings

There are only spaces for 10 people ....

Go on, treat yourself to a day that's about you, for you and by you - a day to help you create a future for yourself that you really really want.

Designing a Show Garden....

2011-07-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Dahlias in show gardens are not supposed to be munched on

as this one has been - even if we say the munching just

proves we're organic?

So now we're in trouble.

The stretch of rubble which was the barn floor colonised with wildflowers

I have a bad habit of seeing every offer that comes my way as a massive opportunity that I cannot possibly miss.

Not so much a 'Green' shoot as a bronze shoot -

I think the tight flower bud in this shot looks like Nureyef curled

ready to spring in a fiercely modern Diagalef (sp?) ballet circa 1923

We were invited to be 'Green Shoots' at the National Gardening Show at the Bath & West show ground this coming 2nd, 3rd, and 4th September. Back in March (or whenever it was in the dim and distant that the invitation came) I was extremely flattered and leapt at the chance. I imagined a small trade stand, Fabrizio and I taking turns to hand out leaflets to uninterested passersby while the other scooted about trying on waxed jackets and testing border forks. I thought, 'JUNKET!'

This glorious dahlia represents my cheery face when I think 'JUNKET!'

How wrong I was.

This uncertainly unfurling sunflower represents how I feel now that

the size of the task in hand has really hit home.

Turns out we've been offered the opportunity to make a show garden which will be judged by the RHS along with the other show gardens by real garden designers who are taking part.

This is our main garden seen through the waving long grass of the orchard -

the spirit of which I'd like to re-create in a 6/4m space at the Bath and West.

Hmmmm.....

'Relax!' I hear you cry. 'Just do your best.'

Do my best? Do my best? How easy is it going to be to dig up

several chunks of this wonderful Fox and Cubs in full flower (it grows on plain concrete)

and persuade it not to mind being moved at the end of August?

You've not taken into account my competitive nature, nor the fact that Fabrizio and I have never yet made a joint decision without about three years of quite shouty wrangling first.

Fabrizio's idea of a garden.

My idea of a garden

And now we must produce a plan and all that by the end of the week. The forms we have to fill in are PAGES long. We have to think of a design! Oh for garden designing computer software AND the ability to use such a thing....

Marsh Thistle: Fabrizio's current most favoured flowering plant

Sweet Pea Chatsworth - my kind of favourite

So, procrastinating wildly, I've managed to persuade Viridor, the recycling experts to sponsor us to the tune of a full load of their wonderful peat-free (municipal waste created) soil conditioner compost into which I plan to pot up all the plants I'm going to dig up out of our garden.

Can you dig up Meadow Cranesbill in full flower and move it?

I'm searching for a buildings supply merchant who might sponsor the materials with which Fabrizio can build a dinky little shed (for the show garden - not for everyday use! - though it may long-term find a spot I've identified where it would be noice to sit and watch the flowers gro.... Anyone got any good ideas of people local (ish) to Wincanton who'd like to sponsor such a thing please e-mail georgie@common-farm.com with details THANKYOU!

can you see the bee munching on this tufted vetch?

Ditto re digging up - can this crazy plan to dig up chunks of

our meadow and move it to the Bath and West show ground at the end of August

possibly work?

And at last we've started designing. We marked out a 6 by 4 metre space in the yard and I've started filling it up with things which we won't take with us but which give us an idea of how the garden might grow (from start to finish in a week). It is challenging to translate this,

mixed with this,

into a show garden supposed to demonstrate what we get up to at Common Farm Flowers from one end of the year to another. Somewhere we MUST include a willow wreath in order to recognise Christmas. I'm thinking of keeping a square yard of bare earth (or rather bare Revive compost) to represent the half acre of seeds I'll put in under little mini moveable polytunnels for the winter (perfect environment for rabbits and mice of course - very little of what I plant in those spaces will survive the winter). Somewhere I might hang a sack of bulbs to represent the 1,650 I've ordered for planting throughout October, November, December and on until I've got them all in.

If I dig up my delphiniums and cut them back hard might they flower again in six weeks for the show?

I've a few poxy pots of Ammi coming on, ditto sweet peas I've planted especially (currently three inches high having been pinched out and potted on yesterday). The Ammi in the garden looks like this:

If only my mind were so ordered.

Bon, hope you've enjoyed the tour of the garden. Don't forget if you're getting married we LOVE doing weddings, if you need to send flowers to a friend we LOVE making up especially cut bouquets to post throughout the UK mainland for ONLY £42 inc p&p - go to our website for details of how to get in touch with us www.commonfarmflowers.com.

And in the meantime:

HAPPY GARDENING!

I love the way this sunflower is tipping a gently unfurling wink.