Winter on the flower farm is anything but a time of rest. While the perennials are tucked up safely under a blanket of mulch, we’re busy gearing up for the year ahead — planning, reorganising, and making the decisions that will shape this growing season, and many more to come.
This winter, one of our biggest projects is reworking a quarter-acre of our field.
The Old Field vs. The New Field
The quarter-acre we’re focusing on is located behind our polytunnel — the less-organised area you’ll see in the footage. This land, which we call the old field, is where we took over the tenancy in 2022. When we first began, I had a vision of creating a lush, garden-like landscape with winding paths and a more natural planting style. But it didn’t take long to realise that if we wanted to make the farm financially viable, we needed to streamline our practices. In March of last year, we took on an additional quarter-acre — what we now call the new field. This space, directly adjacent to the original growing area, gave us a fresh start and the room to implement new ideas, a more streamlined approach, and better systems for managing our growing operations.
In this new area, we loosely followed the principles of market gardening, creating smaller, highly productive growing spaces with a focus on efficiency and careful planning.
In the new field, all of our beds are 30 inches wide, with 20-inch pathways in between. The 30-inch beds are wide enough to give us space to plant a variety of flowers, but narrow enough to manage easily. It also makes maintenance, like weeding and harvesting more efficient.
The 20-inch pathways between the beds are just wide enough to allow us to walk the aisles to weed, harvest, and perform other tasks without stepping on the beds themselves, which would risk compacting the soil. By keeping the aisles to this width, we make the most of the growing space without taking up too much precious real estate.
After a full season using this method, I can honestly say it’s been a total game changer. Our efficiency has improved and we’ve been able to pack in thousands more plants than we ever could in the old field. The difference is night and day — the new layout and approach have truly transformed how we work (less time spent weeding!) and how much we can produce.
Adding a Shrub Area
As well as redesigning the old field beds, we’re introducing something new this season — a dedicated shrub area. We’ve already planted around 30 shrubs and trees, including willow, hawthorn, and hornbeam, but we’re expanding this collection to include a wider variety that will provide blossom, scent, and greenery throughout much of the year.
The new shrub area will not only be used for cut foliage, but it will also serve as a windbreak and provide ecological benefits. By adding a mix of shrubs, we can create habitat and food sources for pollinators and other wildlife. Long-term, we plan to add perennial bulbs to the area as well. Rather than dedicating entire beds to bulbs, we hope they will naturalise alongside the trees and shrubs, plus, it’ll give me a tiny slice of that ‘lush garden’ I had in mind all along!
With our new systems in place, we’re hoping for another year of increased productivity, and lots and lots of flowers.
We’ll keep you posted regularly on our progress, sharing updates and insights as we go.
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