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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:03)
Hey there flower friends and welcome back to the podcast that believes that flowers should be local, seasonal and grown with love, not wrapped in plastic and flown halfway across the world. I'm Jane, the founder of the Hampshire Seed Company and a flower farmer florist who's gone from wedding chaos to seed packet chaos. And these days I also help other growers to build blooming good businesses. So whether you're planting your first tree of cosmos or you're scaling up for serious sales,
you're in the right place. So in the last episode, we talked about why growing flowers is the easy part and why customers don't just magically appear. And today I want to build on that with another lesson that every beginner cut flower farmer learns the hard way. And this is that wholesale and markets and weddings, they're all very different and they all mean different.
flowers they all have completely different requirements and for beginner flower farmers it's often the I'll just grow a little bit of everything phase. Most beginner flower farmers start with the same plan and honestly it kind of sounds sensible at first until you start to dig a little bit deeper and you really start to think about it. So you know
I'll sell a bit wholesale, I'll do a few markets, I'll maybe do the odd wedding. And on paper, that kind of, it sounds like diversification, but in reality, what it does is it leads to waste and flowers that just don't quite fit anywhere. And that's because wholesale and markets and weddings and whatever else you might choose to do, they're not just different ways of selling flowers. They are...
essentially different businesses with different priorities, different pressures and different crop requirements. And trying to grow one crop list to suit all three of those is, it's the fastest way to feel overwhelmed in your first year. Now, if you have been growing for a long time and you know your markets and you know what you use year after year after year, it's much
easier to do that down the line.
But to begin with, it's not always the best idea. So let's just talk about some of those markets so that you can see what I mean here. So in terms of wholesale, wholesale is all about consistency and reliability because wholesale buyers, they generally tend to want the same flowers week after week. They want reliable stem lengths. They want predictable quantities.
and they want flowers that travel and last. They're not really interested in novelty or unusual varieties. They're more interested in whether you can deliver what you said you would when you said you would. it just means that wholesale friendly crops, they tend to be all of the high yield crops, all of the reliable crops, easy to grade.
and bunch because you don't want one flower that's huge and another one that's really small. They all need to be be graded. So if you grow delicate or short-lived or highly variable flowers, then wholesale can really quickly become really frustrating, even if the flowers themselves are beautiful. And then you have markets. This is a completely different game. Markets are almost the opposite.
These market customers, buy with their eyes. They are drawn to color and variety and impact and seasonal abundance. know, at a market, you need flowers that stop people in their tracks and make them want to carry something home. you know, market friendly crops will often include, you know, bright focal flowers, a really wide color palette, contrasting colors.
Flowers that maybe look good in mixed bunches or wild flowers like peonies or hydrangeas. But here's the catch. Market crops often don't suit wholesale and they definitely don't always suit weddings. I mean sometimes they do. So if you think something like pale pink peonies for example, you know, they would be great for a market and for a wedding, you know, I will be honest.
But if we're talking to something like maybe bright pink zinnias, then maybe not. this is, which is why growers who try to supply all three often feel like they're constantly compromising.
So weddings, they are their own beast completely. So wedding flowers require the most precision of all because weddings depend on really exact timing and color coordination. You know, how many times have I been sent a snippet of a dress and being asked to match the exact pantone of the bride's dresses in my flowers? Will I ever promise that?
Absolutely not. So do not promise that. I always have to tell people flowers don't grow like that. It's not paint that I can just mix up for you. The pink of the flowers will be the pink of the flowers, I'm afraid. But they will always look beautiful. And I always tell them, you know, if you like my work, you will love your flowers. But you know, you also need consistent stem quality. Flowers that open on cue on that.
specific day, you know, you can't tell a couple that their flowers just didn't bloom on that day. You can substitute quite easily if something fails, but only if you haven't promised the client a specific variety. And a lot of clients will want you to specify specific varieties. I've had lots of clients come to me and say, okay, you know, yeah, it's August and I want peonies and I want this and I want that.
And I stop them right there and say, no, we are a seasonal flower farm. This is what's available at that time of year. And if it's available on your day, then we will pick that for you. But we do not promise any individual flower in any individual color. But I will always promise that someone's flowers will be beautiful. You know, you just...
But some people do make those promises and some florists do because they actually buy all of their flowers in. So they are able to make that promise. However, even I would argue that whenever I have bought anything from a wholesaler, in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking, well, is it actually really going to be the color that's in the picture? Is it actually going to serve the purpose that I need? And I have on several occasions been very, very disappointed by what I have received.
Sometimes I've been really pleasantly surprised and something has actually been even better than what I imagined. But that's why I don't make any promises. And whatever's ready this week is always a good one. But you know, the wedding clients who will accept that, they do exist. And I promise you, I hunt those people down because they are genuinely the best clients.
But you know, really, if you are growing your own flowers, know, wedding focused growing often needs really, really tight sewing schedules. It needs backup plans.
And that's why wedding flower farming is a lot less forgiving. You know, you don't want to ruin someone's wedding day because you had the wrong shade of something. And it's often, I'd say, better suited to growers who already understand their timing and their yields and their reliability. So it's maybe not a year one type client that you want unless the client is
the type who really doesn't mind, they just want something seasonal, they don't really care too much about the colour or what the actual flower is. But if you are a beginner, is incredibly, even with that, it's still incredibly stressful because you'll still stress over, will I have enough flowers? Will I have any flowers?
And really the biggest issue I see with new flower farmers overall is trying to do it all at once. So they try to grow too much variety, too many low yielding crops that they can maybe buy really easily from a wholesaler, but they actually don't realize how difficult that crop is to grow or how low the yield is for that crop. And some of them just aren't
really that suited to growing in the UK as a high yielding crop, but they might be in another country, far flung country, let's say. And the result of all of this is lots of waste and a lot of stress. know, a flower farmer feeling like they're constantly behind and assuming that, I must not be very good at this. But the reality here, you know, the problem isn't the skill, it's actually the strategy.
So you can simplify this in year one. If you are just starting out, the most powerful thing that you can do is to choose one or two primary sales channels. So I would choose one main one and one backup one where you can then sell those flowers or use those flowers if you don't use them for your
first purpose, if that makes sense. And that means that you don't get locked in forever.
but that doesn't mean that you are locked in forever. It just means that your growing decisions will become clearer. So you can ask yourself, okay, who am I selling to first? And what do they actually need? What flowers suit that channel the best? So essentially when I'm growing for weddings, I know that I can't go wrong with pastel shades and whites.
through the summer, which then go into deeper colors in autumn. So our autumn weddings have always been really, really popular because I do grow a lot of dahlias. And for autumn weddings, I grow a lot of whites, creams, and burnt orange colors. And I put that together with kind of autumn leaves and berries. And that works really, really well. And that works really, really well for us. If somebody comes to me in the middle of October for a bright pink and burgundy wedding,
Well, I mean, the burgundy I would probably be able to do with some dahlias and some chrysanthemums, but the bright pink, I wouldn't have any bright pink at that time of year. So I would need an advanced booking for something like that. And you do get an opportunity with weddings to actually get some advanced notice because clients will usually book, I'm going to say six to 12 months in advance, although not always.
So if you do need some brighter colors, you do have the chance to get some in the ground.
But if you have successions of weddings one after another and they are all using similar color palettes, which I do find a lot of my weddings do use very similar color palettes. So I might have a base of whites and creams and we have lots and lots of those. So a base of white and cream.
and then I'll have a client that comes along and says, actually, you I want yellows. I want a yellow wedding. And then we will agree to have whites and creams and the yellows in there. And maybe some oranges or peaches in there as well. And then I might have somebody else that comes along and wants pinks and purples and blues and lots and lots of different colors. And I can still use the whites and then add the pinks and the blues and the purples in there as well. Or someone might just want the whites and the creams. So
you know, you just, and that's the way I kind of go from one to the other. I kind of have this core base of flowers that I always grow and then I layer onto the top of that the specifics for that particular wedding. If somebody does want something very specific or a very specific color palette, essentially. But when you grow with a clear buyer in mind, everything just becomes so much easier.
your crop selection, your sewing schedules, your harvesting, because you need to harvest it at different times. Even your pricing becomes much, clearer. So all of this, it's all about alignment. It's not about limitation. Don't think about it like limiting yourself. Just choosing a sales channel isn't about...
limit. It's about aligning your growth with the realities and the reality is that most wedding work requires whites and pastels. Even if that's not your cup of tea, you might hate white flowers and I do actually know a florist. If you're listening, I won't say your name, but I do know a florist who hates white flowers and she has in the past done lots and lots of weddings.
And actually she really loved bright colors. But in kind of, you know, eight years of doing wedding flowers, I only ever had one client ask me for bright red and bright yellow, primary clashing colors. And I had to specially grow those flowers for her. Now, luckily she did come to me in time for me to be able to do that.
but literally in eight years, one client asking me for clashing colors. I'm talking real primaries here and I did have enough time to grow them. So the other thing that happened actually that weekend, which is really interesting is I also run a lot of flower crown classes. And what you will see, because that's what I actually decided to specialize in. So I specialize in weddings and events and
Crown classes, I do not do daily bouquets. Now I did used to, but I actually don't do daily bouquets anymore. So with my Crown classes, what you will find if you go onto my Instagram page, which is at futureblooms, if you go into there, what you will notice, and I don't post on there very regularly, I'll admit, I just don't have the time. But what you'll see is whenever there's a Crown class in there,
the flowers from the crown class are actually the same flowers, the same colours that were going on in my weddings around that time. So sometimes you'll have some flowers that didn't quite make it into that wedding because maybe they were too late, they hadn't quite flowered on time, but then two weeks later I'll have...
a crown class and then I'll be able to use those flowers or maybe they flowered too early but I had a crown class that day or maybe they just all flowered at the same time and I did have an abundance that week and you know you'll see some of them have lots of pastels in some of them have lots of bright colors and this particular weekend when the client asked me for the bright red and bright yellow clashing colors I actually had
two crown classes that weekend as well. had one straight after the wedding and had another one the following day. And both of those crown classes, they all had all these bright colors because I actually had to grow a lot more than what I needed because actually I didn't have, because I only had the one wedding with those colors, I had to make sure that I had enough. I had no backup crops. I had nothing.
and I actually didn't want bright red and yellow and blue flowers in my garden either because I don't like those colors. So it was quite difficult and I had to grow a lot of them and actually I managed to use up all of the excess for the crown classes as well. So that did work really, really well, but that was because of really good planning. Essentially, I knew I had those crown classes and I knew I could use them. I didn't need to grow any more other flowers for the crown classes.
So that's all perfect. And then once your foundations are strong, you can then expand from that. But trying to grow everything in year one, it usually means serving no one particularly well. So my best advice is to focus first, grow well, then scale and expand. And actually I decided
to not particularly expand. had to pivot because during COVID, I did Friday flowers and flower bouquets because there weren't really any weddings to do, but that was okay. That was fine, I managed to do that.
But really my core business has always been weddings and events. So I've always known what to grow. So if you are feeling pulled in too many directions or like your flowers has just never quite fit the brief where you're trying to sell them. This might be why wholesales markets and weddings, they all need different flowers and your crop plan should reflect that.
So decide how you're selling before deciding what you're actually selling.
And if you can't quite decide who you're actually selling to, whether that is florists or brides or markets or subscription customers, then I do have a blog for that. It's called Finding Your Niche. I will link to it in the show notes so you can have a little read and then see if you can decide who it is you want to actually serve because...
It's really, really important that you think about your lifestyle and you think about the things that you want to do to make sure that you can actually serve the right people.
So if this episode helped to just clarify a few things for you, I want you to take this one simple action. Decide which sales channel you are going to focus on this season and let that guide every growing decision that you make. This episode is part of a short series on the lessons of every beginner cut flower farmer and learning the hard way. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one.
Next time I'll be talking about why not all flowers are actually worth growing and how choosing the wrong crops can quietly drain your time and profit. Thanks for listening and I will see you in the next episode.