Celebrating 20 years in 2026.

My business is 20 years old this month. I started to write a blog when the business was 10 years old and let it lapse so it seems right to start it up again 10 years later for my 20th birthday.

I started the business because I loved growing cut flowers. I had grown them for fun at home and had become obsessed, so really I was looking for a way to legitimately grow loads of flowers so I could be surrounded by them at all times.

The photo below is of launch day in my first ‘official’ cutting garden and the aim was to produce as many flowers as I could in the most efficient way possible and I thought the best way to sell them would be to do weddings. So that is what I did - I became a wedding florist specialising in home grown, seasonal flowers.

At the time, this was 2006, there were not that many people growing flowers in a small scale way like this. I did encounter a lot of puzzlement from people in the first instance, from a lack of understanding that flowers weren’t grown at home and were mostly imported, to ‘they are just garden flowers, why would I pay for them’ . But there were plenty of people who loved the principle and aesthetic and I have had the privilege of working with many wonderful clients over the years who trusted me with their wedding flowers.

In 2009 I moved the cutting garden to Doddington Hall and this is where I have been based ever since. I am in the kitchen garden and my garden there has become the place where I have really been able to explore my creativity. It is amazing to work in a place where gardeners have worked for hundreds of years before me and that my garden is contributing to the history and story of the garden.

I did however find that my garden was becoming wilder and wilder - it took me a while to work out that gardens are an act of creative expression and that my floristry style is wild and undone, so of course my garden will be too! But I did spend a lot of time worrying that I wasn’t doing it ‘right’ and frustrated that whatever I thought I ‘should’ be doing didn’t quite translate. Essentially my head and my heart were disconnected when it came to the garden and what it should look like or be like.

A pivot came when I trained in Reiki and became a practitioner and master. It made me realise that all things are connected and that nature and creativity together are an important route to well-being. I did further training in counselling, mental health first aid, nature connectedness and started to use my flowers and garden to facilitate personal development and healing as well as for creativity and weddings.

My relationship with the garden changed and I stopped looking at it as a means for production and more as a free spirited entity in its own right. I was expecting it to behave like a well-mannered Labrador when in fact it was a sassy cat. I changed the way I gardened and put the emphasis on it becoming a self sustaining, resilient garden that mimics natural processes, with a focus on ecological principles.

The business now sits at the intersection of wellbeing, creativity and nature. It is not about growing flowers to sell and more about using flowers as a medium for personal and spiritual development.

Rather than growing and selling flowers the business has 3 key offerings:

Nature connection and reiki - using flowers and nature to help people to reconnect with themselves. Deepening our relationship with the natural world is a vital pathway to self-discovery and healing.

Hands on workshops and retreats - these are immersive experiences rooted in the garden and seasons - foraging, creating and exploring in nature.

Seasonal wedding floristry - firmly led by the seasons, this aspect of my business hasn’t changed. I will always love creating bespoke, sustainable designs for nature-loving couples who prefer loose, undone aesthetics.

I really can’t believe that it has been 20 years - what a ride! and much has changed. What hasn’t changed is my commitment to working with the seasons and nature and weaving that relationship into everything I do.