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Quayle Cottage

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Quayle Cottage

Quayle Cottage Micro Flower Farm - Maitland, NSW.

20/02/2025

The most beautiful order for with a few extra dahlias from on top. What a combo 😍

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17/02/2025

I got some really exciting feedback about our Chocolate Cosmos tonight! 🍫

In the grower community, this velvety beauty is known for being a delicate diva with a vase life of only 3-4 days. I even heard a florist on a podcast say that she only ever uses it if she has a local source where she can get it a day or two before an event so I’ve always gone with these anecdotes when discussing it with florists.

I’ve seen a few websites list the vase life as 4-6 days and even 5-7 days but always thought they were just embellishing a little since they sell the plants, and I’ve never wanted to over promise.

Well tonight (Monday) a florist messaged me to say that the Choccy Cosmos I cut for her last Wednesday for a wedding on Saturday was still “thriving” even after being used in arrangements under a marquee in 35° heat.

Looks like I need to start giving it more credit!

06/02/2025

A bucket of 70 stems of zins cut by yesterday while I was running late to get home from work. I double counted every bunch and checked them for quality control, and only 1 stem needed replacing. I think he has officially levelled up from apprentice to (unpaid) employee now 🙌🏻

30/01/2025

We have some more chicks due to hatch next week under one of our broody hens so I think needs to do another photoshoot. This one from last summer with the little phlox hat will be pretty hard to beat though 😍🥹

29/01/2025

I thought we should probably make a post about The Harvest so we have somewhere to easily refer people when we get questions!

For the last few months and I have been working on a concept to bring local growers and florists in the Hunter region together in one space. We had a little test run a couple of weeks ago and it was so much fun! Tomorrow it officially kicks off and will be weekly until late Autumn and then it will hopefully kick back off in Spring if this first season goes well.

We wanted to focus on community over competition so the concept is “connect and collect”. The Harvest will act as a collection point for florists to pick up their yummy, local blooms rather than driving between all the farms, and also as a space to connect with all the amazing flowery people in Newy!

It won’t be open to the public but if you are a grower interested in selling to florists in Newcastle, please send me a DM. Or if you’re florist interested in joining you can contact Ash 🌸

14/12/2024

Don’t tell my cats but these are the cutest whiskers I ever did see 🐱 Cats Marina Pansy is the most perfect shade of periwinkle blue. Can’t wait for them to get some stem length so they can be the ‘something blue’ in some bridal bouquets.

02/12/2024

The Zinnias truly are so delicious 😍

30/10/2024

Pansy pricing despair: okay, I’m usually pretty confident with my pricing but every time in invoice for pansies, I spiral 😂 So dramatic for tiny flowers, I know, but the struggle is real!

So, my florists will know I’ve been charging $1.50 wholesale per 30cm+ stem. And truthfully I haven’t had any complaints but the back and forth I have with myself every time is: “but they’re not as tall as other flowers and they barely fill any space so they aren’t a practical purchase for florists who are trying to keep their prices reasonable for their customers.” But then when I hobble inside after spending an hour and a half harvesting 100 stems of pansies and beg Sam for a massage, I am reminded of why I charge what I do 😂

Firstly, pansies are very low to the ground so you’re bending even further than normal to harvest.

Secondly, because the plants are somewhat trailing (some varieties are more upright than others and for those I am very grateful!), you can’t actually tell how long a stem is by looking at it; you have to follow the stem all the way back to the base of the plant to feel whether the stem is long enough to justify cutting it yet. So you’re often bending over to touch a lot of stems you don’t even end up picking.

They are also a lot more delicate than other flowers so you have to be super careful when stripping the stems. It’s not one smooth motion like most cut flowers, you have to individually pluck the leaves off being careful not to snap the stem.

And finally there is the ongoing dead-heading to keep encouraging growth and lengthening. No wonder my back is sore 😂

So I hope everyone sees them as a beautiful little luxury and can understand their value because overall, pansies are really not the most efficient or practical flower for both the farmer or the florist, but they are my favourite and they make me and so many other people very happy. Plus they have a pretty outstanding vase life and they add something super special to a florists design so don’t worry, I’m not going to stop growing them!

27/10/2024

Even though I touch flowers most days, I rarely give myself the time to play with them. I grow them, cut them, and send them off in buckets for amazing florists to use. So it was really nice to have an excuse to arrange something today at our monthly Growers Gathering.

18/10/2024

So sad that the whole Nature Shades series of pansies has been discontinued. This one is Nature Antique Shades but all the others are gone too, including another fave which is Nature Mulberry Shades… 😢 I have some seed left and will also attempt to save some, but for next year I have ordered a tray of Imperial Antique Shades to trial which has some similar colours so hopefully it can fill the void.

20/08/2024

13/04/2024

A moment for Isabellina 😍 This buttercream yellow colour is so versatile. It goes with just about anything! You’ll definitely find this beauty in my Zinnia patch next season.

07/04/2024

Autumn in a vase 🍂

26/03/2024

Zinnias may be basic but they truly are the MVP 🙌🏻 I sowed my finally succession 4 weeks ago and they are already 20cm tall. They don’t mess around!

19/03/2024

It’s crazy to think that we’re starting cool season flowers to bloom in Spring right when the Summer flowers seem to be performing better than they have all season! I am so excited for the Ranunculus, Anemones, Sweet Peas, and Stock, but this armful of Zinnias is making me want the warm season to stick around for a good while longer 🌸

19/02/2024

Feeling so inspired after our visit to 🤩 The flowers I got to cut from the dahlia and perennial fields were seriously special and it was so much fun to be able to bring them home and create another arrangement with them!

06/02/2024

Support your local flower farmers and small businesses this Valentines Day! ❤️ Tag your partner so you don’t end up with imported roses that have been dipped in chemicals. Sometimes they need a not so subtle hint 😉

We will have $35 bunches for pick up from our micro flower farm in Telarah on the evening of the 13th, and the morning and evening of the 14th. DM to order or to discuss delivery.

31/01/2024

The newest little life here at Quayle Cottage is fitting right in 🌸

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Videos

Overview of florlist.com - a free availability list & order request platform for selling wholesale flowers! This is definitely not sponsored but I really wanted to share this platform with other growers who sell wholesale because it’s too good to gate keep! It took me hours of research to find so if I can save you some time trawling FB groups and Reddit threads like I did, you’re welcome 😂

I had so much fun harvesting this order for @tannorwoodflowerfarm. It was definitely because I got to harvest the first stems of the season for a lot of things. The first Bearded Irises, the first Floret Zinnias, the first Dahlia, and the first decent amount of Scabiosa I’ve had. And it all turned out so incredibly magical together! Can’t wait to see it in Nat’s wedding work this week 😍

Some love for Larkspur, Corncockle and Phlox. (And some love for @samuelchantphoto who spent over an hour harvesting 100 stems of Corncockle before I got home last night. What a bloody champion 🥰)

The first weekend of Spring did not disappoint! We had amazing weather for getting garden jobs ticked off. The Spring to do list is getting shorter and shorter which we’re very happy about. If you walked into our house right now you’d definitely be able to tell we haven’t put much of our attention into the inside of the house lately 🙈 With the help of our little garden cat, Percy, we fertilised the whole garden, planted some more hydrangeas, tied up the sweet peas, sowed more forget me not seeds, and did some emergency mulching in the front garden on Saturday. And on Sunday we brought in a recruit to help us make a start on edging all the beds and to get the new garden over at Phyllis’ mulched. We’ll definitely be switching over to using straw from now on. It goes so much further than sugar cane mulch! *No oesophagus was harmed in the making of this Reel.

Safe to say this weekend is going to look a little different to last weekend! We had some amazing rain last Sunday which meant I was out there direct sowing seeds (including the new Floret zinnias) and weeding while the soil was easy to work with. I managed to get 100 x zinnias and 100 x phlox sown. The zins have already starting popping up but it will still be a few weeks before we see the phlox. This weekend we will be doing some emergency mulching to help keep the soil cool and to retain moisture with these summer temps we’re already getting (and it isn’t even spring yet!), we’ve got lots of bed edging to do to stop the bloody lawn from creeping in, more weeding and more direct sowing.

About a month ago we called in our labouring team (aka my little brothers) because we needed all hands on deck. Between us all we got 8 beds prepped, weeded, planted, and most of them mulched. They planted hundreds of seedlings (they would argue thousands and truthfully, if there were more daylight hours in June, it would have been thousands!) But they made a good dent getting in 100 Scabiosa, 500 Pansies, 50 Sweet Peas, and 50 Delphinium. I’m obviously going hard on the Pansies this year because those 500 we planted this day are only about 2/3 of them 😂 They are under planted under everything so I’m hoping they’ll kind of act as living mulch as well as stretch nice and tall to give my florists something magical and whimsical to design with ✨

An ode to the most beautiful, glittery Chocolate Cosmos in the morning dew. It may not have the longest stems, and is an absolute pain to harvest, but I’ve just ordered 10 more of these beauties to add to my cutting patch because they are just glorious!

@imustgrowflowers and I had the most magical, flowery day at @southernhighlandsflowerfarm yesterday. We got to learn all things flower farming from Jen, and after picking our own buckets of blooms we did a floral design class with Erica from @little_house_on_the_dairy 🌸 We could have chatted with Jen and Erica all day and we almost did 😂 There’s really something special about flower people. It was so lovely to be around a group of women with a shared love of growing and beauty. I felt so inspired to come home and continue playing with the blooms we got to cut yesterday, and of course I’ve got a list of perennials I need to add to the garden for next season!