dahlias – Garden Gate Flowers

Not Going Cheap in the Sales

January means planning the spring planting but these days, fewer seed catalogues are landing on my doormat. Either the postal service is getting worse, or the seed companies are going electronic. Either way, instead of browsing catalogues, nowadays I am surfing the Web for my gardening fantasies.

I have plenty of seeds left over from summer, so have only needed to supplement them with a few from Ben at Higgledy Garden. But the internet is a dangerous place and leads me into horticultural temptation. After the losses of ‘dahliagate’ I was minded to order fresh ones to swell the depleted ranks and while I was browsing those tubers, I could not resist ordering a bulk batch of ranunculus.

My relationship with the Persian Buttercup over the years has been tempestuous, to put it mildly. The first time our paths crossed, at the Old Place, we managed to produce a fine crop of the multi-layered rose-like blooms. It seemed so simple: stick them in a pot in the autumn greenhouse, and by early summer – Boom!

In subsequent years I have tried the same formula, but it just hasn’t worked out. They have thrown up a few, sometimes weedy, green leaves, but each time they have wilted and died in the pot before spring could arrive. And this autumn I put them in 9cm pots and they never even bothered to germinate or shoot. Just rotted. I desperately want ranunculus in my life, but each time I try, they just swipe left.

I am clearly doing something wrong. Reading their biog, I see that they like the paradoxical “damp, well-drained soil.” So, they do not like being dry, but at the first sign of too much water, the corms will melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Mrs B laughed when she knew I had succumbed to the Temptation of Ranunculus once again. The words of Soft Cell, she regards my attraction to ranunculus as a so so love; the standing joke of the year. For my part, I tried to make it work and although they didn’t even germinate last time, I wanna make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Despite my best intentions and ferent hopes, deep down I know that, even if they do manage to produce a few green shoots, I it is likely to be another case of Say Hello then Wave Goodbye.

Training Day

The summer has been a steady learning curve as we have developed our cut flower production systems of growing, cutting, arranging and marketing. So, always looking for knowledge to help us on our way, Mrs B and took the opportunity to attend the horticultural equivalent of a Ted Talk. Otherwise known as the monthly meeting of the local gardening association at the village hall, October’s guest speaker was a cut flower farmer from a neighbouring county who promised to share the secrets of her success.

As non-members we paid our £2 per head for entry, a cost that would be covered by the Garden Gate Flowers training budget. There were over forty keen gardeners in attendance. The presence of Mr B and me reduced the average age by about ten years while my own attendance doubled the number of men

We were encouraged to buy raffle tickets, hoping for one of several exciting prizes. On the Table of Wonders I could see a hand-painted greetings card and a large bar of Toblerone, but for me the top prize was the large ball of Nutscene natural jute twine. You know when you have a reached a tipping point in your life, when a ball of string beats a bar of Swiss chocolate.

On another table, the members had brought in one ‘stem’ from their garden for the monthly competition, voted on by all present. Someone told me there was a time when the category of ‘something from the garden’ had a wider brief, resulting in countless jars of produce. Apparently the (now sadly deceased) previous Chair became so fed-up with repetitious entries of pickles, jams and jellies, she momentarily lost her patience and muttered an expletive under her breath. Overheard by another member, she is now privately known as “Mrs Fuck-Chutney”.

I think Mrs F-C would have been more accommodating of the entries this month which consisted of a range of roses, dahlias and a fine deep purple aster. But before we could vote, the lecture began. The speaker was a seasoned performer, winning over the audience with some well-placed flattery. Like Bono from U2 telling every gig audience they’re the ‘best ever’, our speaker knew how to work her particular crowd, complimenting them on the large turnout; noting their ‘stunning’ fashion sense; and then, rather bizarrely, telling everyone what wonderful toilets their hall has. She bracketed them alongside Gloucester Services in her top ten of public toilets. High praise indeed.

With the crowd eating out of her hand, she was able to flip through the rest of her Powerpoint, giving us pictures of her various pets, skipping the slide on accounts (“boring” she said) and getting to the nitty gritty of what to grow, how to grow it and what lessons she has learnt over the years.

It turns out, she has been doing this for six years but, after flogging herself every weekend going to farmers’ markets and stalls, she has decided to rein it back in and just do occasional bouquets for local delivery (as well as Ted Talks to gardening clubs). It was reassuring to know that GGF is doing the same things that she does. It appears there is no great mystery to it, although she did take great delight in sharing the “secret” way to wrap flowers. It turns out that this is how we wrap ours too, so maybe not that big a secret.

The talk ended with a discussion of seed suppliers (General consensus: Higgledy Garden, Good. Sarah Raven, Bad).

The talk was running twenty minutes over the hour, and we all felt we needed to get back home for hot chocolate and digestives, so it was left for the current chair to thank the speaker and make the draw. We did not win the ball of string, but we did depart with some stems of hollyhock which another member had brought it. No one seemed that interested in the hollyhocks until they heard the colour of the flowers was ‘blood red’ at which there was a noticeable stirring in the audience. Gardeners love a freebie – especially if it is a good claret.

We left having learnt a little but reassured that what we are doing a lot right. And we might have even have some hot red hollyhocks next summer.

Is This a Pivot I see Before Me?

The business buzz word amongst some of my self-employed friends at the moment is “pivot”, to describe a changing of direction in one’s business or lifestyle and some have suggested that we might be mid-‘pivot’ in the Midlife Garden. It is true that ever since the ‘Invitation To Leave’ from my previous employer (I see it as an ‘inflection point’ in my life), I have been searching for an income stream that could be rewarding financially as well as emotionally. Clearly, this blog is never going to cover both those bases, so I knew I would have to be a ‘change agent’, taking a look at what I enjoy (apart from scribbling random words) and find something truly ‘transformative’ to ‘add value’ to my life (and bank balance).

Regular readers (both of you) will know how I find enormous emotional rewards in gardening. But after the success of the cut flowers on show at the 2024 WOTY*, I’ve joined forces with a neighbour to explore ways to monetise our blooming commodities.

First we decided to ‘segment’ this down, to ensure we had flowers for the whole summer. We took a deep dive, drilled down and, thinking outside the MLG box, we invested in dahlias. Previously regarded as blousy, ostentatious dandies that evoked memories of dreary seventies mixed borders, these could yet prove to be a game changer, producing blooms throughout autumn.

To move the needle for early blooms, we took a punt on tulips. We were ‘down on all fours’ with this, looking at it from the client’s-eye view and decided on Luxury Tulips: stems to mark us out from the ten-for-a-fiver supermarket types in dull hues of red and purple. So, posh tulips became the ‘moat’. We ‘swept the sheds’ to make it happen, to ‘action this solve’ and November saw us raking compost on then off, then onto the front bed to get the 500 bulbs to the perfect depth. We waited for April with crossed fingers.

We chose a price point, to give the customers ‘snackable content’ hoping they will be back for more when spring turns to summer. Unfortunately, the first stems were snackable to the point of stunted, but, they eventually reached their full potential, proving popular, if unprofitable. But not all stems will have the same base costs as posh tulips, so our ‘runway’ is longer than it might appear. The tulips were a loss leader, but a striking one at that.

We will take a ‘kaizen’ approach to improve all that we do as we try to get this thing off the ground (after mulching and watering it first).

By the end of the summer, we might have an answer to the question: is this just a side hustle or could I be pivoting from Ed Biz to Flower Biz? Only time, ‘brand positioning’, ‘demand generation’, ‘revenue performance management’ and the power of ‘the flywheel’ will tell.

*Wedding Of The Year