Plantpassion

29/11/2024

My black Friday plans? Buy nothing, make some plants for free. - potting up the sage and pelargoniums we took cuttings of in October. Go for a walk and give a talk at 2pm this afternoon about seasonal flowers and foliage. Hopefully that means i’ll be off tech all day - then I might look up a recipe for this evening.(or i might find a book)

I love being Subversive - you want to beat the system too? Just buy nothing today

26/11/2024

This is wreath planning week.
We've started making the wreath rings, from our cornus, willow and clematis stems, we've collected together all our dried flowers, and we'll be cutting conifer and the first foliages later in the week.

There's actually a larger amount of foliages that can be used on wreaths than most people realise, As well as multiple types of conifer, we'll be using Rosemary, Viburnum, Pittosporum, Eucalyptus, Euonymus, Bay, Holly and Ivy, (if you've any of those that need pruning or any other evergreens to add to our farm grown stems, we'll come and prune and tidy for free in Horsley and surrounds )and there are certainly lots of decoration that mean we don't need any plastic wrapped Orange and lemon slices, or imported from abroad lotus heads.

Teasels, Honesty, Poppy seed heads, Statice and helichrysum, are all available in abundance here on the farm. We don't need any artificial berries, when we've got holly and rosehips, and viburnum buds, Akebia seed heads and dried chillies.

And all of these will be held together with coloured Twool. Easy on the hands, and totally compostable.

If your garden doesn't have a selection of these goodies, then we are making wreaths from this week onwards, which will last well beyond Christmas, there are a couple of places left on our Wednesday 4th December Wreath making workshop at Albury Vineyard, or we'll be in Horsley on the morning of the 7th December at their Christmas fair, selling wreath rings, half and fully decorated wreaths and dried flowers to give as Christmas gifts.

18/11/2024

Will and I went to Wisley this afternoon to brighten up a dull Monday. We used the new road, and it was easy to get in, and even easier to get home again, without having to go anywhere near the M25 junction. I'm Speaking at Hilltop Live on Friday at 11.30 and Sunday at 1.30 and 2.30 if you need an excuse to try out the new road layout yourself.

14/11/2024

For the last 3 & a half weeks I've left the flower farming to my brilliant team, and I've been off inter railing around Europe with my husband enjoying Switzerland, Italy and France.

It's been an amazing experience, 32 years since we last interrailled, and we visited 16 different places, on 17 trains, travelling 3159 kilometres and spent many hours looking out over lots of different European landscapes. Here's what I learnt about myself, and how that will help in my flower farming and in keeping myself fit and healthy in the coming year.

1) I love silence....... While I really enjoyed our big city visits to Zurich, Luzurn, Bologna, Dijon and Paris I find the bustle and noise of a city exhausting. Standing back on the field the last couple of mornings with the mist hanging in the valley, and just a very distant background noise of the M25, I found a lot more relaxing than negotiating busy city streets. I'm going to lean in to that, and enjoy the silence more.

2) I love a good public transport system, and a pedestrianised town centre. Zurich excels at this, with trams and buses and funicular railways all included in their day tickets. Alassio in Italy was an amazing set of pedestrian streets with all the shops restaurants and bars reached without having to negotiate traffic. Bologna was pedestrianised at the weekend and there were so many people on the streets, I'm not sure where the cars went Mon-Fri. Both of the above meant that we have gone 3 and a half weeks without getting in a car, which also means our step count has gone up. Which also means this is the first holiday where I haven't put on weight, despite enjoying the best of the local food and wine wherever we were. 🤔 walk more, drive less, get more healthy...
(and yes now we are home I can say that ALL the trains ran when they should, we didn't miss any connections, and the latest any train was (ironically) was 15 minutes late into Zurich on our first day.)

3) I love a map, and a statistic. Whenever we got to a new place, I was quite obsessive about finding the physical map, so we could cover as much as possible and not miss out on the best sights.(yes google maps did get used, but I also learnt I hated paying for roaming charges every day, so not all the time)
Last year I didn't do as detailed a map of the field as I normally do, so 2025 will be the year of the field plan, with colouring in, and numbers and dates. I'll make sure I post them on here.

Thank you to the team at Byway who organised our accommodation and tickets (no campsites this time round). It was a wonderfully grownup way to see Europe, and I'm sure it's not the last time we'll be interrailling.

16/10/2024

Flower farmers need resilience to grow our flowers and get them sold as beautiful bouquets and buckets for events….. Not only do we have to deal with the weather (which everyone knows hadn’t been ideal this year) and pests - (snails and deer have been my top foes this season). This week i’ve had to deal with the human type of sh** that thinks it’s fine to unload their lorry load of building waste in front of a farm gate. As our cash strapped council is not collecting anything left on Private property, it means I’ve had to waste a huge amount of time, effort and money getting it sorted. There are investigations ongoing, so if you were in Staple Lane on Sunday, please let me know if you noticed anything (or noticed what time there wasn’t anything) and i’m going to need to up my marketing game for the beginning of next season to recoup the money so watch out for my early season offers. Thanks to the Guys from Chambers who saved my back and even more of my time by loading it up and carting it away.

14/10/2024

It’s pelting with rain here today, so i’m not sorry i’m spending today finishing off the writing for 2nd edition. After a year of hard work and working with a wonderful team, it will be with my editor by Thursday. This week will also see the last big fresh flower orders go out, and then we’ll have a few weeks of planting and organising before our wreathing season starts. Just a few places left on those if you haven’t started thinking about your festive decorations yet.

12/10/2024

Flowers for the weekend? Pop along to The Charcuterie box for seasonal blooms

27/09/2024

On the BBC website yesterday

Women work long and gruelling hours to grow the flowers sold across Europe.

20/09/2024

So if your employer gave you a “wellbeing hour” every now and again, how would you spend it?
Michaela chose to come and pick flowers with her friend.

10/09/2024

Beautiful bridal bouquets, made for the weekend, and I'd love to show you the pictures of them against the bridesmaid dresses, but Facebook isn't playing ball. Thank you Mary and Ann, - the Mums of this couple getting married, for introducing Ben and Becca to me and our fresh local flowers, and for letting me know that the rain held off for the ceremony in woodland at the weekend.
Next year is looking very full for Plantpassion weddings, so I'm in planning mode to get even more gorgeous stems into our field. If you know someone who should know about our flowers, please do get them to download our wedding brochure to find out how we work, and contact us to find our if the date is available. https://www.plantpassion.co.uk/wedding-flowers-brochure

04/09/2024

The Autumn colours are coming, the spiders are out and the mornings are cooler. I’m a big fan of Autumn, and obviously I love Dahlias, which will keep on giving in the coming weeks, especially now we’ve given them a comfrey tea feed. I’ll be at Wisley with mine at the weekend. If you’re visiting the Wisley show, do book now. If you’re not visiting the show - avoid the area completely!!

09/08/2024

Today has been Florist orders, PYO, 8 deliveries for Friday flowers, and some more making the PYO area deer proof, but this was the only picture I took! It is a pretty lovely bucket full though! Still 2 spaces for tomorrow if you’d like to PYO at 10am - tag a friend who you think might like our flowers, views and fresh air!

28/07/2024

With August just around the corner and the field brimming with flowers, we're opening the Pick your own every day 10-12 (Tuesday-Saturday) from the 30th July to the 23rd August. At our weekday sessions, one child comes free with each adult, and we'll be introducing them to the bugs and beasties that love our flowers, and give them a jam jar to fill with their choices. Please note what date you'd like to attend on the preferred date section of the order. Book your session here.

Our Pick your own sessions are a wonderful way to get outside, enjoy the fresh air, and pick yourself a bucket of flowers to decorate your home. Choose the date you'd like to join us, bring a bucket to take your flowers home in, and enjoy a morning or evening in the open air.During August  we have ...

21/07/2024

It’s been a week…

In actual fact it’s the kind of week I love…. It’s been great, and there are so many people to mention!

It started last Sunday with the last Social. After 6 years of teaching online training courses with and , we had a wonderful session with 20 of our current course members and alumni on the fantastic organic farm of . I loved hearing more about business, plans for the future and top tips, and watch out for what I’m doing next over

Back home on Tuesday we got lots of Biennials planted, and then we picked loads and loads of flowers, including armfuls of scented lavender, and sent out flowers for Church decorations for a wedding locally to me and for another wedding that needed a lovely mix of pinks and blues.

There were also flowers for botanical casting workshop, which sounded wonderful, and obviously our local florists and .

We sold out this week 👏, and provided table flowers for Tapas evening.

On Friday morning we received our New sustainable gate sign (just 4 years overdue) designed by .coloursuite and skilfully carved by on Oak. Hopefully now, I won’t have quite as many people tell me they didn’t realise we were there, after 11 years.

We ran our first Corporate team morning for the lovely guys at . There was much competitive spirit shown over barrows of thistles, and while it wasn’t a long enough session for them to pick their own flowers, they did get a demo as to how to arrange the bi-weekly subscription that they get for their office.

Saturday’s flower club was all about Perennials, and thank you everyone who came for being so good at spreading the word - there is space on next month’s session, but September’s about Dahlias is filling fast.

And with bouquets, pick your owns, and additional buckets going out the week has been quite full. - Just time for some family food, and a Hedge trimming session with team Brown today.

01/07/2024

Pick your own, and group talks at the farm. We’ve got plenty of dates for both in the next couple of months, so get your diaries out and book via the website
July dates
Pick your own
10am Sat 6th, Fri 12th (1 space left) Fri 19th, Sat 27th
Field tour
11am Sat 6th
Flower club
10am Sat 20th
Link https://www.plantpassion.co.uk/flower-farm-experiences

25/06/2024

Thankyou to a lovely group of ladies this evening, and the weather was just perfect

21/06/2024

Whew, hot and sticky by ten past nine, but the Orlaya and Stocks and Poppies are out, and the Zinnias, Nicotiana and Scented Pelargoniums are in. What are you planting today? Now on to Friday flowers and prepping for tomorrow’s Sweet pea and Rose flower club