PETAL POWER
GREEN AND GORGEOUS
RACHEL SIEGFRIED
6 ACRES, 4 POLYTUNNELS
OXFORDSHIRE
‘T he sheer beauty of freshly picked flowers brings people to tears’
I’ve been flower farming for 15 years. I was a gardener before starting Green & Gorgeous, working in a beautiful walled kitchen garden on a private estate in the Cotswolds. My job was to produce vegetables, fruit and cut flowers for the lord and lady of the house and take them up to the butler – all very Downton.
I was left to my own devices to experiment, but I was sent on a Sarah Raven course in 2002 and she was a massive inspiration to me. That day was really the beginning; the seed was sown and I thought I could make this a business.
I kicked off with farmers’ markets, which were all the rage. There were lots of them and I was the only one selling flowers. I would turn up with buckets of flowers and make bouquets on the spot. It was a great way to get a feel for what people wanted. When I started, there were just a handful of people flower farming here and British flowers were quite unusual.
Seeing people’s response to the flowers galvanised my belief that I was doing the right thing. People got very emotional. I think because a lot of the flowers I grew – like sweet peas and scented roses – are things they hadn’t seen for many years in a florist shop. The sheer beauty of freshly picked flowers… it did bring some people to tears and that really spurred me on.
. They put up with weather extremes like drought
