So here’s the second Plantpassion guest blog, here’s Jennifer’s take on working at a Surrey flower farm, after 4 year’s experience of working with me. Jennifer working on splitting the Dahlia tubers 1.  Why you started / wanted to work at Plantpassion I was at the RHS book stand at the Chelsea Flower Show a number of years ago and I came across The Flower Farmer’s Year by Georgie Newbury and I was immediately captivated.  I didn’t even know flower farming was a ‘thing’.  The idea percolated in the back of my mind for several months an ..read more

So we’re almost 2 weeks in to Coronavirus lockdown. We’ve all been told to work from home if possible, and although the plants have to be watered, i’ve set my wonderful team of Liz and Jennifer a couple of work from home tasks. Here is the first ever Plantpassion guest blog. Liz’s take on working on a flower farm. Liz picking Phacelia in May Why you started / wanted to work at Plantpassion? I am at my happiest when outdoors, so when Claire put a shout-out for someone to pick flowers one morning a week, I gave her a call. Within no tim ..read more

So it’s been a mild but very wet winter so far here at Plantpassion. What have we been up to at Hill top farm, and when can you start to buy flowers from us again? Well at the moment, the field is covered in lots of weed control fabric. This is our No-dig method of farming, with no need for chemical weed killer or ploughing the soil. Underneath the plastic is lots of manure from Manor farm, compost from our own bins, and last year’s strimmed plants, all being worked on by the worms to make wonderful condition beds for planting in in April and May ..read more

At last it’s February and I can see Spring on the horizon. Last night a friend came to dinner, and we were discussing the easiest cut flowers to get started with on an allotment or in a garden. My first tip is, make sure you like the look of the flowers, don’t just grow them because they are easy. If you don’t want them in a vase because you don’t like the colour, or if you’re not keen on the scent of the texture, then you won’t pick them, and flowers for cutting are at their best when cut for the vase regularly. So if like me your fingers are itching to start sowing seeds, which ones will be ..read more

It's the beginning of August, and already our Dahlia patch of 800 plants is producing plenty of stems. We've increased the numbers of our favourite varieties, so that we can provide enough for larger florists orders, and for our summer weddings. Generally we provide Dahlias by colour scheme - Whites and Lights / Peaches / Pinks / Brights and Darks. We're just trying a couple of new varieties this year as we're pretty happy with our range, and i'll keep you updated later in the season as to how they do and whether they stay on the list for next year. For now, here's the names and pictures of ..read more

When you get your flowers from Plantpassion, they'll already be conditioned. This means that unlike market flowers, you don't need to cut the ends, soak them overnight, strip off foliage or take off side shoots or deadhead and divide up the bundles. Our stems will come ready for you to use except cutting to length. However there are quite a few things that you can do to make sure they stay as fresh as possible. Here's our suggestions. 1) when you take them home in the car, wedge them in (gently) in the footwell, so that th ..read more

We’ve been selling Curated buckets of flowers at Plantpassion since we started, but we initially just sold them for Weddings and events, and they were large buckets of flowers, plenty to make lots of table displays. But for the last couple of years as well as our DIY event flowers we’ve been selling our flower arrangers bucket.A half sized option, which is our way of introducing our local flower lovers to the wide range of wonderful flowers and foliage that’s available at the field throughout the year ..read more

Easter Weekend. It’s just about the latest date that it can happen on, and that means the flowers are now in full spring swing. Here’s what we’ve been up to in the last week. Tulip picking : Tulips are so weather and heat dependant. When it was cold last week, I was lucky if there were 10 tulips that had coloured up to pick, but although I thought i’d sold every last tulip that i’d picked by Friday morning, by last night there were a couple of hundred more. We’ve got not only beautiful singles, like the pinky Valentine in t ..read more

I always think Spring is properly here when the Narcissus start flowering in abundance We’re used to blousy yellow Daffs in gardens and on roundabouts, so when I planted the Narcissus at the farm, I was thinking more about scents, and more subtlety. Creams to go with other colours in bouquets, and something different to what you can pick up at the supermarkets. So here’s a run down of the varieties that are going to be available from Plantpassion over the coming weeks.Currently picking - Bridal crown, Shorter, but sturdy an ..read more