Our year in flowers

Four months of growing and making bouquets. From the bright, airy wildness of July, into exuberant August, the warm glow of September and the richness of October. The dahlias and chrysanthemums were the last to finish, and what a finale!

We so enjoyed growing and preparing flowers for our wonderful subscribers and we can't thank them enough for their support. All our groups have been involved in preparing beds, sowing, watering and tending, and it's brought us all a lot of joy. We were so lucky to meet Mike Tristram, Sompting Estate, and be given the opportunity to harvest some of their wildflowers early in the season. And we had a surprise gift of dahlia tubers and gladioli bulbs from Phillipa, one of our subscribers, salvaged from Haskins' throw-away bin! We like to think we have started reviving, in a small and sustainable way, the Worthing heritage of flower farming, which included gladioli, chrysanthemums and carnations. 

British cut-flowers are still available if they are grown under cover, enhanced with greenery from shrubs, berries, seed pods and dried flowers. A florist can order them for you, so you can keep enjoying (fairly) local, seasonal flowers from other growers until we start our cycle of growing and harvesting next year. This is what we are planning for 2020:
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• We hope to be able to take on a few more customers. We think the price of the bouquets will be more than the £10 we charged this year, so when we have worked out the details we will let everyone know and if you are interested in staying with or joining the scheme you can tell us.
• We will also be offering jam-jar flowers or shorter-stemmed bunches of flowers at lower prices, which will be available to buy/collect from lovely zero-waste shop Larder, Montague Street.
• We are re-organising our social and therapeutic horticulture sessions so that more of our clients and volunteers can be involved in growing and preparing the flowers.

In the meantime enjoy the turning of the seasons, the stillness of winter and the anticipation of new growth to come.