Photobombing bee!

So British Flowers Week started today and I made my first video clip of the week. I thought I would share it here with you. 

I have just finished co-hosting #britishflowers on Twitter. Tonight we were chatting about #britishflowersweek and how we would all be celebrating it, spreading the word about British Flowers, and generally just oohing and aaahing over the sumptuous photos that the Twitter folk were posting. In amongst the tweets I spotted a link from a wonderful lady called Fiona who runs Firenza Flowers. She has written a journal post about why she uses British Flowers as often as possible. Take a look at it here. She sums up how I as a grower feel about my "babies" that I have nurtured to the perfect point for cutting. I hope you enjoy her post as much as I did. 

I love the way our customers enjoy our flowers. They love the natural style of the flowers, and the fact that they are a lot different to a supermarket bunch. The sight or scent of them often trigger memories of loved ones no longer here, or happy times they spent as a child. They evoke nostalgia. Sweet William and Sweet Peas especially seem to have this effect.

So whatever you do this week to celebrate British Flowers Week, take time to stop and smell the roses, or the sweet peas, or whatever flowers you may have in your home or garden. Take time to smell them, look at them and really enjoy them. And if they are grown by an artisan flower grower know that they will have been grown with passion, love and commitment to bring you great joy. What more could you ask of a humble bloom. 

British Flowers Week starts on Monday the 19th June. It is a week long celebration of British grown flowers organised by New Covent Garden Flower Market,  you can find out more details here.

In the run up to this I was honoured to be mentioned in an article in the Telegraph Gardening section. You can read the "Ladies Who Bunch" article online here. I was even more chuffed that they used my photo both as the lead photo and on the cover of the gardening section. I guess it helps that I had wonderful photos taken by the fabulous Katie Spicer. 

During the week I am aiming to upload a new You Tube clip each day. You can find my YouTube channel here. Wish me luck! Hopefully the sun will shine and I won't have to do too many takes for each video!

Then on Saturday Ann and I will be attending a wonderful workshop organised by Grace Alexander Flowers held at Forde Abbey, Dorset.

In the meantime, we have been busy planting out this years flower plants, harvesting the flowers that are blooming, and getting the ground ready for more planting. Oh and a bit of weeding, rotavating, strimming and path laying! We had a warm Winter and a cold Spring which tricked a lot of plants so the flowers I would have expected have been a bit jumbled in their flowering order, but beautiful none the less. 

If you would like a bouquet or posy of beautiful British flowers in your home for British Flowers Week or beyond, do get in touch. We like to have at least 24 hours notice as your flowers are picked to order. 

If you are a Wiltshire or Hampshire florist who would like to use more British Flowers in your wedding or event work then also get in touch. We are supplying a few freelance Wiltshire florists with wholesale British grown flowers already but definitely have capacity to supply more. Drop me an email and I will let you have our wholesale British Flowers price list and we can arrange a patch visit. 

Exciting times! Having just purchased a mini grow tunnel we now have lots more space to grow things undercover. It is only 6m x 3m but it is a lot bigger than the greenhouse we were using up untill now. The space will mostly be taken up at the moment by seedlings before they are ready to be planted out. Although a few young plants have gone into one of the raised beds to hopefully give us earlier blooms. So far we have cornflowers, scabious, snapdragons, nicotiana and some dill planted inside the tunnel. Once the seedlings get planted out into the patch we will add some large pots to grow other things in, and squeeze in a few tomato plants and the odd cucumber for my son Henry. After all he has to have some kind of reward for opening and closing the side vents! I can just about squeeze down the side of the tunnel to do this - but he seems to have lots of fun doing it.

Meanwhile on My Flower Patch things are coming along nicely. Lots of new perennial plants and shrubs have gone in. The tulips are just about over - boo! The alliums are just starting - hooray! 

So if you are after some local, seasonal, gorgeous flowers to decorate your home, office or to give as a gift then get in touch. We will have bouquets a plenty to go around. 

Hello and welcome to My Flower Patch, and our new website. 

At My Flower Patch we grow wonderful, fresh flowers and arrange them into stunning, unique arrangements. Your flowers are picked to order at the peak of the freshness, conditioned to help give the best vase life and will be with you in the shortest possible time from field to vase. We love the looks we can create by growing all our own flowers. They have that fresh picked, gathered look, because they are! They have movement and a vibrancy that can't be replicated by flowers that have sat in refrigerated transport or flown half way round the world.

We can help you with the perfect flowers for any occasion. Birthday flowers, congratulations flowers, celebration flowers, thank you flowers. Flowers as a gift, or flowers for yourself. Flowers just because you fancy them, or because a friend needs cheering up. Let us know what the occasion is and we can help you by creating the perfect bouquet, posy or arrangement of local, seasonal, British grown flowers.

Our flowers are grown in our Upavon flower patch, near the banks of the River Avon in Wiltshire. We do not have a polytunnel so they are at the whim of nature. We normally have flowers from late March through to the first frosts, usually mid-October.

With thanks to Katie Spicer Photography for the photograph.