Stunning Micro Flower Farm | How this mother created a business from her own backyard.

I never actually really knew how special flowers were until I started growing and selling them and seeing people's reaction and actually all the memories that they hold for people. It's funny because I always thought I'm growing veggies, we need to feed people, we need to feed healthy food, local food, spray free and then I really started to understand how meaningful flowers are. I've had so many brides and just yeah local people just crying because you know their grandmother used to grow these sweet peas and and then you give them in a bouquet and they're just yeah all the memories come like flooding back and it's just so beautiful and yeah I've just created a lot of like special relationships with people in the community just through flowers and it's just yeah really amazing. So I'm here with my friend Zoe who I've actually known for quite some time now. I actually met Zoe before I met Troy and before we went sailing back when we lived in the city and you were doing some interesting things then and I was really happy to see you when we arrived here in the coffee shop. Me too. Yeah I feel like we have similar interests and yeah while we moved to the country it was for similar reasons and we've both got young families now so and I thought it'd be really interesting to share with everyone what you've done here and when I saw you again after I hadn't seen you for about eight years, you told me about this idea and it's really amazing to see what's happened in the three years since you sort of had the idea and now we've got this this amazing flower garden, flower farm I should say. Just a little one. So how did you decide on having a flower farm? Okay so this is it's a big question because I get asked all the time. Yes. So you know how to answer it now. Yeah pretty much. So yeah back in the city I was working a lot on growing vegetables. Yeah. So I had my own little business. Yeah. And that was setting up edible gardens in people's backyards and yeah I'd done my permaculture course and I'd recently been to India and had gone on an agricultural ecology course. Yep. That was just living on a farm for a month and learning about natural farming and gardening and I'd recently finished my degree in sustainability. So it was kind of all just coming together and I didn't really have a plan. I didn't really say this is my goal, this is what I want to do. I just loved doing all the things I was doing so I just kind of rolled with that and yeah then when our first daughter was about nine months old we moved down here and then we kind of got the intention of okay we're going to set up veggies down here and sell organic vegetables. But then somehow it kind of transformed into growing flowers. Yeah and I grew up on like flower farms as well. My grandparents had a flower farm in Roserbrook just near Marga River and I grew up on our property in the Perth Hills and my parents had Geraldton Wax and then I sold a few bouquets at the local RGA and they kind of just went really quickly and then there was a lot of interest for it. So I kind of yeah kept growing it and then a couple months in our good friends asked us to do or asked me to do their wedding for them and I was kind of like very hesitant and saying oh no that was kind of my five-year plan maybe I'll do weddings in five years maybe. Yeah I was very very confident with the growing side but was kind of just getting into you know self teaching myself about floristry and particularly sustainable floristry. I never really used floral foam or anything like that. It was a got some really nice photos from Victoria Baker and she posted them up and then ever since then I've just had couples wanting our flowers for weddings. So I've just got weddings booked yeah all throughout the year now and I mainly am a wedding florist now. I don't know if I've told you all but I used to be a florist when I was studying floral foam if you're not aware of what it is. It's like a green I don't know it's a hydrocarbon based product that you can arrange really easily in but it does shed a lot of microplastics that end up in the water system and so a lot of florists are moving away from that and you wanted to do that and it's really special. Yeah yeah I did a bit of research when I was getting into floristry about yeah sustainable floristry and I think when I was younger I was interested in floristry like I did apply for a few florists here and there when I was you know 21. Yeah but I always found it quite strange that they you know it's supposed to be like a celebration of flowers and nature and I found it quite strange the amount of you know plastic wrapping that was involved and and the floral foam so I kind of just like yeah steered away from that direction but yeah with using my background in sustainability and you know love for nature and growing and it just kind of all just fell into place and then yeah just did hundreds of bouquets and just hated them and cried over them and yeah just practiced a lot yeah until I got it to the standard that I was happy with and it took a long time like I was really not happy with my bouquets for a long time so it took practice. There's a lot of online courses now you can do particularly in sustainable floristry so I've got a few like really favourite flower farmer florists that I follow and get inspiration from and I've done a lot of their courses and I'm constantly kind of looking at their workshops and so I love learning and like I constantly am wanting to learn more and how to make myself better at what I do like I just love doing that. I think what's really wonderful about being self-taught is that you kind of create your own style and you're really set within rules. Yeah and I really draw inspiration from nature and yeah having a lot of like garden textures and things that you would never see in a florist available to florists so I love doing that and I love just walking through the garden and just finding little things like I can put in and I think that really makes it special. Yeah I've always been kind of a creative person as well so yeah it kind of just worked out and now I just love what I do. At the moment I have I think this year is about 15 weddings? Yeah. Bouquets for the bride and the bridesmaids, boutonnieres for the men, like arbor arrangements, a couple of maybe urn arrangements and then table arrangements so yeah two full days of prepping and arranging and then half the day setting up at the venue. I would yeah mark out three days, four days for a larger wedding but yeah I don't think it would be a profitable business if I was just selling the bouquets you know through my flower delivery or to local retailers. I think I really need the weddings to and now that is my main source of income. Yeah and then the local bouquets are just you know to supply to the local community which is really important to us. And also you're always going to have excess flowers so it's really nice to be able to like share that. Yeah exactly so I always try to you know consistently supply the community with flowers as well. So you started the flower farm actually on this property, you were somewhere else? Yep. You were renting? How did you find transporting, was that difficult having to start again here after setting everything up there? Yeah yeah so we thought we were going to be there for, we thought we were potentially going to buy that property. Yep. I mean yeah it held some really you know special memories there. Yeah as you said starting up the whole flower farm there. So yeah moving here was a massive job. It wasn't so difficult in that we knew what we were doing then because we'd done it so many times. Renting so many places and establishing so many gardens you kind of get used to moving. And that was with the vegetables and yeah consulting for people. Yeah yeah yeah. So then moving the flowers I mean we'd we'd built up the soil there for a number of years and so that was a bit hard. But yeah moving here it was just a matter of just hard work. Yeah. Just trying to get everything in the ground for the spring flowering. We kind of just threw all of our stuff down in the house and just didn't even look at the house and just started on the garden. Yeah. As soon as we got here and that was about 10 months ago. So yeah we moved here just after Mother's Day. So luckily I was you know finished my flowers for the season. And then we usually have two months off in winter. Two months off of selling and weddings. And but we're just in the garden. Just yeah prepping. Trying to yeah prep for the next season. So it was really hard but now we've got all the beds established. Like all the annual beds are created. It's very intensive. So we pretty much use like the biointensive method that is used for veggies. And then we're just looking at creating more perennial areas as well. Just for a bit of low maintenance areas and more like drought resistance. And then yeah focusing on plants that like plants such as grasses and flowers and like foliage plants that can add some really like amazing textures to bouquets and arrangements. And yeah just be a bit easier in the garden side of things as well. So that's your perennial beds? Yeah so that that's what we are aiming to create in the next year. Okay yep and so you've started it a bit with your roses at the front of the house. And so you're going to integrate that a little bit more into the rest of the garden. Yeah. So you've moved here to this place in Pemberton. So you're actually like pretty much on the outskirts of town. You're still pretty much in town. You've got neighbours quite close. What size is your block here? It's 1400 square metres. Okay so I'll have to figure out what that is in acres. I think it's about a third of an acre. Okay yeah so your flower farm's probably a little under a quarter acre. And so you're growing like quite a few flowers in a quarter acre. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Yeah yeah yeah it's good. I always get we always get people stopping by and just saying how beautiful it is and like how do we fit it all in here. Yeah yeah. It's it's a good size and it's a good size for maintaining it. You know the house is just there. We can just step out. I can look out of the kitchen window and see what's going on. Yeah. And so I think what compared to when we were on that five acre property last year it's it's a lot different because you have so much space. You're like oh just put that there and you know have big paths and it's not really an efficient use of space. And everything's obviously done by hand. We don't have machines or anything so. Yes. We have to consider that when we're yeah making everything as well. When you say we you're talking about. Yeah my husband Luke. Yeah. So he's been. The main man. Helping you till no doubt and he was the muscle behind setting up all the beds. Yeah he was and he did an amazing job when we first moved in. There was a little mini blueberry orchard where all the main annuals are now. And he just dug all of those out by hand. They're about 20 years old. So he dug those out by hand and transplants them on the side. Yep. And then yeah he made he made all the beds. Irrigation like helps me with the netting and staking and you know all that heavy lifting and. Yes. He set up the greenhouse. Yes. So he does a lot. Yeah I think also if we were selling wholesale we would need a bigger property. Because you have to meet those constant demands. Yes. From the. The florist. Yeah from the florist and everything. But whereas there's a lot of demand on supplying for the wedding couple. But in a different way. So I can have a it's more exclusive if you like. So they do have to let me know like a year in advance. So I can actually then I go on to order the seeds. So I choose out particular colours. Particular varieties. What is going to be flowering when. So I can achieve the you know the pastel colour palette at this time of year with the exact varieties. It requires a lot of planning and experience I think as well. A lot of I've tried to do record keeping but I think it just because it's come so naturally to me now. I think I just know okay I'm going to do this at that time. I'm going to. So you have to know when to sow your seeds. How many succession plantings you need. And just grow extra like a lot more than you think because you don't know what's going to happen that season. So they might flower early or late or you might have to have a backup focal flower because that one didn't work or there's disease. So there's a lot to think about. So yeah I think it's just as demanding but I am able to do it on a smaller scale because yeah it's not just bunching up mass massive loads of flowers and taking them. It's more about meticulously planning out and then arranging it which is very time consuming as well. What is your business name? Okay so our business name is Farmhouse Flowers. So I'm not sure where it came from but. It's pretty descriptive of what you were doing. Yeah I guess we were on a farm in a farmhouse and I guess the first house that we came to when we moved from Perth was actually a little farmhouse. Just across the road strangely from the house we ended up making the first flower farm at. So yeah there was a lot of like sweet memories there from when my little girls were small. So I think it just fitted and we're in a country town and there's a lot of farmhouses around here. So I guess it's just the the vision of picking some flowers from your garden and putting them on your farmhouse table. So I think it really yeah speaks to everyone around here. Yeah it evokes like the cottage garden kind of feel. Yeah and that's what we're growing like the cottage garden style flowers you know roses, dahlias, all of that sort of stuff. So yeah beautiful. And did you do all your own branding or did you hire someone to do that for you? Yeah I did all my own branding. So everything I've just done it myself. So with my first business in Perth I actually hired someone to do the logo and all of that sort of thing. But you know I thought you know I could do it myself. So we've done really well. I really like it. I like your branding. Yeah I think a lot of people have specifically commented on the branding and I think that is actually really important to just get people intrigued about what you're doing and yeah I loved it. And so with your marketing you mainly what are you mainly relying on to get your the word out there about what you do? Yeah so mainly social media. I didn't actually have social media for a number of years before I started business. So it was a big kind of transition for me to get my name out there and be consistent with posting things. And I don't know I kind of I didn't really have a strategy about it. I just posted my the garden what I was doing and people started liking it. So yeah. So when you say social media I'm assuming it's mainly Instagram. Yeah that's our farmer and florist. Yeah mainly Instagram and then the Instagram kind of just automatically updates to Facebook. So I don't really go on Facebook but I do have to kind of check it. I think a lot of the local people use Facebook. So I try to you know post on the local community pages. Yeah on the notice boards. Yeah on the notice board so that's really helpful and people appreciate that as well. And then I also have my website which I created and that just has my flower delivery on it. It's an online shop. So people can order custom bunches online. Yeah they can. So there's social media and then are you in any like directories or anything like have you found that you've been getting work through them? Yes I'm with one directory. So it's called From This Day Wedding Directory. Yeah. And you just pay a small amount per month to just be a part of their directory. Yeah. They post a lot on social media and they also have a wedding fair once a year that you can be a part of. Yeah. They've just come out with a magazine as well. So I've got a feature in that. As well as directories I have collaborative partnerships with venues around the local area. So one in particular is the Orchard Barn. So Petrina and Paul run Clover Cottage Retreat in just in the Manjimup, Quinninup area. And yeah we have a really great relationship where we work together in you know helping the wedding couple just find great local vendors. So you know I would recommend her and she would recommend me because we've worked with each other for a little while now. We know what to expect and we just I love her venue. It's just so incredible. Paul and his mate just hand built this beautiful barn where they have the couples have the reception and then the property is just stunning. Just absolutely amazing just in the forest and so homely and yeah it's really special. So I love doing weddings there. Thank you to my incredibly clever friend Zoe Palmer for taking the time to share her story of her farming and floristry journey with us. If you're interested in finding out more or if you would like to get in touch with her I've put links in the description of this video to her website and social media pages. We are so grateful that we can continue to share our own stories and the inspirational stories of the people around us in our community. Until next time thank you for watching, liking, subscribing and commenting.