Spring on the flower farm

Jo Thompson - Wye Valley Flowers

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Our Gloucestershire flower farm is bursting with life and colour - a kaleidoscope of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, muscari, anemones, hellebore and our favourite ranunculus with peony-like petals. Flower farmers, like gardeners, are optimistic by nature – planting bulbs in the autumn, not knowing for certain whether they will be rewarded with any blooms in the spring. 

Most of our family were born in the month of February and we all look out for snowdrops to indicate the start of spring and the proximity to the birthday season! These nodding messengers announce the worst of the dark days are over and light is returning. It also heralds Mothering Sunday and Easter are approaching, the perfect time to think about buying a bouquet and one of our busiest times of year – but did you know the average bouquet will have travelled over 4,000 miles to get here? British flower growing is having a renaissance and many artisan growers, like ourselves, take a gentler approach to planting and floral design – no plastic packaging, no chemicals or pesticides, no dyes, no floral foam, and no air miles.

The favourite cut flowers at this of time of year tend to be the blousy daffodil - British grown, cheap, and cheerful from your local supermarket, and synonymous with spring! For more impressive blooms though, look instead to growers listed on the Flowers from the Farm website, who have been cultivating more subtle and sustainably grown varieties throughout the winter, available in a delicate range of soft and creamy shades of white through to buttery yellows. Also, look for scented varieties in particular such as Thalia and paperwhites - perfect in a simple vase on windowsills or grouped in single stems in narrow vintage jars. 

Remember spring cut flowers often need a little more attention and tulips particularly will need recutting every few days, as they keep growing above the rest of the arrangement. We don’t tend to favour piercing the stem of tulips as it can lead to bacteria getting in, but if they do flop, wrap them in a newspaper cone for support in clean water overnight, which should elongate the stems again. Cutting the stems at an angle, like a quill, will also give more surface area for them to draw up water. Don’t recut daffodils if they are in a mixed vase, as they have a poisonous, gloopy sap – instead cut them and leave separately for 24 hours before adding to other types of flowers. We don’t use flower food as it contains bleach, which isn’t a particularly pleasant product for the environment. Spring flowers fresh from a grower, properly conditioned, shouldn’t need anything more than clean water to look great for up to 2 weeks.

Finally, let’s talk foliage! There are enough bits of twig and tree strewn across the garden after the earlier storms. Place some in a heavy based vase for an instant feel-good effect. Branches with buds and catkins, such as alder, birch, hazel, willow, elegant magnolia, and hickory are particularly pleasing. These woody stems will muck up the water in your vase though, so refresh regularly and enjoy!

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