Bouquets after flowers venture starts to bloom

Mrs Hodgson and her daughter have been delighted by reaction to their three-year-old growing venture in Yorkshire and are out to encourage more farmers to follow their example – and join them in a co-operative effort to market cut flowers with the “Seasonal and Local” promise people have started to look for on vegetables.

Mrs Hodgson farms with her husband, John, at Everingham, near Pocklington, growing barley, wheat and oats on 200 acres.

But she has always also been a keen gardener and three years ago she was asked to grow the flowers for a friend’s wedding.

She grew a few extra rows to sell and was impressed by how many customers came to the gate.

Last year, she moved out onto the farm land and took in some part-time help from daughter Peggy, who returned home during the summer with a degree in geoscience from St Andrews University.

This year, the garden has been relegated to trials plot and the flower production is keeping the two of them busy over half an acre, including a polytunnel, in between their other jobs. Next year they believe they will need an acre.

They think they have found a good diversification opportunity which would suit other farmers able to set aside half an acre or so.

In between cutting and selling their crops, they have created a website which invites growers to join a not-for-profit co-op using membership fees to promote “traditional flowers, locally grown in their natural season”.

The heart of the website will be an interactive map guiding visitors to their nearest local flower grower – all set up except for the list of suppliers.

Mrs Hodgson, 56, and Peggy, 24, started their selling season this year with violets, grape hyacinths and seldom-seen varieties of daffodil, in time for Mother’s Day at the end of March.

This weekend they were at York Farmers’ Market, with a supply of larkspur, bells of Ireland, sweet peas, flowered chives and iris, and their season will end in October with the last of their sunflowers and dahlias.

Mrs Hodgson said: “I’ve got nothing against supermarkets selling flowers. They do a remarkable job and they have got people used to buying flowers regularly, not just for special occasions.

“But you always see the same varieties of chrysanthemums and carnations and roses, all year round, because they need to stand up to the transportation. And because that is what the suppliers are geared to even local florists no longer seem to stock a full range of seasonal British flowers, although I am sure they get asked for them.

“We are delighted with the interest we are getting. We took a couple of hundred purple alliums to Driffield two weeks ago and were sold out by 11 am. There is room for other suppliers on a similar scale to make a useful strand of income supplying their local farm shops, flower shops, farmers’ markets, wedding organisers and so on.

“Cut flowers can give you quite good returns without a lot of capital outlay and sit well alongside normal farming activities.

“All the income from the co-operative will be spent promoting British-grown flowers and we will be looking towards getting into talks with the supermarkets.”

Founder members of the co- op will be charged £55 and given a discount for further years of membership. For details see www.flowersfromthefarm.co.uk.

The Hodgsons, who have a website of their own – fieldhouseflowers.co.uk – sell from April to October at Driffield Farmers’ Market, first Saturday of the month, and York Farmers’ Market, at the Murton Livestock Centre, third Saturdays. They also usually still have flowers for sale at the farm gate – Field House Farm, YO42 4LH.

The new co-op was set up with advice from the Co-operative Enterprise Hub – log on to www.co-operative.coop/enterprisehub or email [email protected].