One year of Bramble Flower Farm

We started Bramble Flower Farm in the middle of winter, one year ago today. We had no idea if we would actually be able to successfully grow enough flowers to make a living, or if anyone would actually buy them. But we had never been so determined in our life to give it a try!

At first, Bramble was going to be a side hustle, something we would try to fit in alongside our day jobs. But we soon realised this was what we wanted to do full time. We founded the company, started sowing seeds, and guesstimated planting schedules and harvest times. Our dining room tables were covered in trays of seedlings. We lived and breathed Bramble, to the point that our friends were sick of hearing about it. People asked us how we planned to sell them. "We'll figure it out as we go," we said. 

We started with growing flowers in our own home gardens, but it was clear that this wasn’t going to be enough space. Luckily, Becca’s parents had a fenced garden they let us use, which had previously been a market garden. It was very overgrown, filled with a tangle of weeds and fruit trees. Although it looked like a jungle, the garden beds had been covered with weedmat, ready for someone to bring life back into the garden. Soon, we had tackled the weeds and brought the garden back under control. Growing the flowers wasn’t without challenges - from too much rain to not enough, extremely dry nutrient-lacking soil, cutting worms killing our seedlings, possums killing our seedlings, slugs and snails killing our seedlings, drought and floods. We learned how to manage these problems, and by December, our flowers started to bloom. 

Our first weekend selling our bouquets at a little roadside stall, we sold out! We were so excited that people wanted to buy our flowers. All the hard work through the cold, rainy winter was going to pay off! 

That summer, we sold as many flowers as we could grow. We loved watching the bouquets change each week, as different flowers bloomed. We had delicate sweet peas and gypsophila, bright zinnias and snapdragons and beautiful golden sunflowers. We were constantly learning, figuring out which flowers were our favourites for arrangements, which flowers our customers loved, and which flowers we didn’t like. We made mistakes along the way - like not researching which Dahlias were best for cut flowers - but kept on learning, writing everything down as we went for future reference.

Our first season ended in May, as the weather got colder and a storm damaged our flower supply. We doubled down and built a new flower field to give us a larger growing space, and began work on a new mobile flower stall. The winter months have been filled with prepping for summer. Over 20 cubic meters of compost has been shoveled, new beds rotary hoed, and we’ve placed even more focus on building up the health of the soil. The greenhouse is overflowing with seedlings (no longer on our dining room tables!) and we have thousands more seeds waiting to be sown.

Looking back on how far we have come with Bramble, we are so thankful for all the amazing support and love we have received for our flowers. While there is definitely a lot of hard work that comes with running a flower farm, there is also a lot of joy. We are so lucky to get to do what we love. We are hoping to be back with bouquets at the end of August or early September - see you then!

Becca and Em xx