S P I N D L E

19/01/2025

Wow! 700 native trees and flowering shrubs IN 🙌🏻

Such a wonderful team effort from fellow growers, florists, friends, neighbours, family, and last but not least the worms!

A particular shout out to my 15 year old twins who came along, under duress, because we felt it was important for them to see what real work looks like and know how good it feels to achieve something together, outside in the cold air, as a team. They really got stuck in and made us proud. They even said they’d enjoyed it. 💕

I’ll post some pictures of the plantings - all wood chipped and tidy - another day. By the time we finished I was only thinking about sinking into a hot bath!

Thank you so much to those who came to help 🙏 and to Jo for the best chillies, and the lemon cake.

17/01/2025

Getting ready for planting day tomorrow 💚🌿

Lots of lovely things going in including alder, birch, hornbeam, dogwood, hazel, hawthorn, spindle, beech, crabapple, medlar, cherry, willow, elder, white beam, wild service, rowan, quince….

14/01/2025

Andy Dibben of Abbey Home Farm & Ben Rankin of Eastbrook Farm & gave an excellent talk last week on integrating trees into veg growing systems. They’ve written a book too (I’m not being paid to say that!).

Their talk reminded me of the complex interactions between correct site selection, spacings and orientation of the trees to best work with growth habit & leaf size, aspect, soil type, and topography, providing graded wind breaks, nitrogen fixing plants, being careful with water hungry trees, lateral vs. heart rooted trees, underplanting, frost pockets, coppicing, light levels, not to mention the infrastructure including fencing, mulch, and w**d management.

Andy concluded the talk by saying that in the light of the terrible weather we’ve had in the UK since 2022 (and despite his hope of a few years ago) trees won’t build yield in a silvohorticulture system, but they will help maintain it.

This year’s conference was sobering. In the talk on ‘The Economics of Sustainable Horticulture: can it be profitable?’ the message seems to be; not unless you do it at scale, mechanise, and have up-front investment. The honesty of the speakers was both refreshing and, in some cases, hard to hear.

pic 2 (swipe left) shows an aerial shot of the .25ha field at Wyld Meadow Farm in West Dorset on which we’ll be planting 700 trees and shrubs this coming weekend.

A FiPL (Farming in Protected Landscapes) grant has de-risked for us the significant up-front investment in plant stock. The plantings offer future income streams, and learning opportunities all round.

If you’re interested in planting foliage for floristry, now’s your chance to join us and learn by doing it! We are looking for more volunteers to join us this Saturday 18th Jan, 10-4pm.

We’ll also be offering a warm and tasty lunch in the lovely Wyld Meadow Farm kitchen.

DM me for details.

09/01/2025

At our session this morning at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on diversifying into flowers and foliage there were many farmers asking the what, where, how, and how much questions. It was just as we’d hoped - a room full of interested chat. It was a great pleasure to work with a frankly awesome team of women on this 🙌🏻
.collective

I got loads out of the session this afternoon on the economics of sustainable horticulture: can it be profitable? There were some uncomfortable truths being candidly and courageously shared by both Calixta and Ash . My key takeaway being what an enormous privilege it is to work on the land and be close to nature, and how many challenges it throws up.

Wednesday was pampas installation day with expert help from .

The quiet of my walk along the river in the blue of the frozen dusk was much needed.

12/12/2024

Low winter sun, foliage standing to attention, ready for Saturday’s wreath making

I kind of love this time of year. Low light, quiet working, cold hands, getting jobs done. Yes, sadness too.

But also the promise of warmth and light and togetherness just around the corner for most of us.

This post is for people who maybe aren’t looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

Sending out leafy love. This too will pass.

### 🌿

26/10/2024

From a distance I thought this was a berberis, but it turns out it’s a photinia. Just a plain old redtip. This is isn’t just the common ‘red robin’ but a particularly spectacular variety called photinia davidiana fructu luteo with yellow berries which contrast spectacularly with the red leaves.

I’m a bit in love.

At today, catching some sunshine on the grasses. I brought home a 1m tall fountain grass called pennisetum ‘black arrow’

There are so many beauuuuutiful trees and shrubs at Knoll including Quercus Phellos - an oak with slim leaves that look like willow, Gingko, and a lovely Sorbus Intermedia or Swedish Whitebeam, Berberis Gagnepainii, a pale pink spindle called Euonymus Hamiltoniana oooh, the list could be longer but I’ll spare you...

11/10/2024

The spindle is soooo good this year! 😃

29/09/2024

I was in beautiful Coventry Cathedral last week for a conference on Plastics, Packaging & Waste in Floriculture (PPW).

The PPW working group was set up with funding from IDH (the Sustainable Trade Initiative) and brought together by Angela Colton & Jill Timms & David Bek from Surrey & Coventry Universities.

They have just launched a brilliant guide for florists, to help us reduce our reliance on single-use plastics.

Link to the guide in bio ☝️

We are all positioned somewhere along the line on the long journey towards sustainability, so there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ players here.

Good job too, because there needs to be tolerance between us. There was a diverse range of attendees, from the BFA (British Florist Association), Interflora, and the international FSI (floriculture sustainability initiative), to small scale British flower growers.

At moments the tribal lines in the room felt palpable. Which is why it was such a big achievement bringing everyone together.

The organisers did a great job of keeping the conversation wide open, welcoming contributions from across the industry.

The sustainable floristry mechanics demos were really interesting, and I came away with raised awareness of innovative new ideas, collaborations, working groups, teaching styles, new products, services, and projects, all being led by passionate advocates for change.

In their concluding comments, David & Jill encouraged everyone to reflect. What do we need? What are our questions? We set the agenda together. We are all invited to join the Working Group. If you are interested, contact

26/09/2024

Link in bio ☝️ to my chat a few days ago with Georgie from …. with a correction that the funding is to research the potential, rather than roll it out nationally tomorrow! … 🤨

‘On the ‘tube today (link in stories) I’m talking to about the launch of the hub for and - do ping over and have a look, sign up, be inspired - how marvellous that our artisan industry has grown so much that we are inspiring distribution hubs for our crops x enjoy! x’

24/09/2024

04/09/2024

Ooh it’s started!

Preparation for the FiPL funded foliage planting of native trees and shrubs. Farming in Protected Landscapes is part of Dorset National Landscapes (previously AONB) and the support we’ve received from them has been amazing 🙏

This is an exciting time in the development of the British flower industry. More farms are looking to diversify into flowers and foliage, enterprise stacking & building biodiversity into their systems (although mowing back a wildflower strip just as the insects are laying eggs should disqualify for funding straight away!). More on this another day.

We are planting the trees in mid Jan. If you’re looking to find out more about this kind of project, why not come and join us on one or both of our planting days? Lunch will be on the Wyld Meadow Farm house 🍲🍞 Message me if you’d like to come along. If there’s time we will pop down the hill to see the Spindle plantings too, 10 years on.

Harvesting this site is going to be a joy! This is possibly one of the best views in the area, straight down the valley to the sea.

17/08/2024

Spindle from the air 🌿

Photo credit:
Eben Henderson-Hyde

01/08/2024

First week of the hub at with lots of interest from florists and growers💕🌸

21/07/2024

Posted • When a plant loves where it is , it just grows and grows. Lots of analogies to be had with people! Our collective’s goals are Collaboration, Community and Creativity, when you find yourself in the right place with the right people you can achieve more than you ever dreamed! Let’s Grow Together!

12/07/2024

Home sweet home. It was so great to get back to the field after nearly a month away.

I flew to Australia to visit my old Dad who has Parkinsons with related dementia and is now in a care home. It meant leaving the family, and the field too. In June 😢.

But it was 100% worth it. 2 weeks with Dad, every day, sometimes for 5 hours. We listened to music, looked at old photos, looked through his books. Sometimes he slept and I read. It was a precious, peaceful time together and I don’t regret it for a moment 💕.

But my twin teenagers were an inch taller when I got back, and the thistles at the field were off the scale!

Thank goodness for people at home holding the fort - Jonny, stalwart and steady papa, Lizzie cheerful hub backup, and Dan & Jake as well as the team who powered through June with huge success 🙌🏻 🌸

This post is by way of explaining my absence, expressing my gratitude, and my joy at returning home. 🏡


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14/06/2024

Last November I hosted a seminar at Spindle, in collaboration with the Soil Association and funded by FiPL (Farming in Protected Landscapes) / Dorset National Landscape / AONB. We invited interested stakeholders including local landowners, flower farmers, and an agroforestry specialist aka my cousin . We looked at how agroforestry works in practice on a farm scale and why foliage growing might be a good idea from an agroforestry perspective. Our focus was on questions of design, stakeholders, business models and partnerships, funding and constraints.

I’m delighted to share this aerial photo of ‘milk stand’ at Wyld Meadow Farm owned by farming friends of ours just down the road with whom i applied for a FiPL grant to trial an acre of foliage growing.

Excitingly, we’ve just been awarded the grant to plant 1000 native trees & shrubs here.

💥🌿

It’s a long term project - it’ll be 5 yrs before the crop is ready to harvest.

This means that my usual autumn foliage growing courses will happen on-line on October 9th, 12th & 16th, with an additional option of two voluntary, hands-on tree-planting days in early to mid January 2025 (dates tbc). These volunteer days will include a site visit to see the established plantings at Spindle, and should be a rich source of information for anyone wishing to learn more about planting foliage. If you’re interested in learning more about establishing a foliage plantation, dm me for details or click on link in bio. There will also be a delicious lunch in exchange for the sweat of your brow.

THE ON-LINE COURSE will cover the nuts and bolts, in downloadable format, of the kinds of foliage florists want, what plants to grow, maintenance & pruning, conditioning, pricing, presenting foliage for sale, w**d control, optimum spacing for harvesting & ground cover.

31/05/2024

One of last week’s orders ready for delivery by The South West Flower Grower Collective.

We feel so proud and excited that it’s working, and that customers are buying, and that the feedback is so positive 🌿

It certainly feels like these sustainably grown British flower hubs are long overdue 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Lots of gorgeous flowers have already been snapped up for BRITISH FLOWERS WEEK next week, but there are many more beauties on the web shop 🌸

Link in bio ☝️

18/05/2024

Cutting hawthorn, up a ladder, face full of foliage, secateurs in hand. My happy place. ​​​​​​​​
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I get to know my plants in a visceral kind of way, with scratches and dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards hair to show for it. ​​​​​​​​
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But it smells and feels so good up in that tree. I can’t really find the words.