The wonderful world of sustainable, small scale and peat-free flower farming - with Georgie Newbery

Georgie Newbery is chair of Flowers From The Farm and founder of Common Farm Flowers, one of the first of the new artisan flower farmers to establish in the UK.

A small scale flower farm and educator, the farm, established in Somerset in 2010, grows up to 100,000 stems annually without the use of chemicals, Newbery is set to feature at RHS Chelsea Flower Show this May in the Great Pavilion where she will present the first representation of a flower farm at the show, showcasing Ranunculus, also for the first time.

She hopes the display will "advocate for flower farmers" and inspire them to perhaps start growing flowers themselves.

One of her Chelsea funders is peat-free compost supplier Sustain - and Newbery, as a peat-free flower farm from the start, says there is no excuse for using peat "just because it makes life easier for me". She also believes she can "demonstrate that it's easy to grow peat-free".

While she fully understands the difficulty and cost for larger commercial growers of switching their nurseries to peat-free systems, she says "everything we do, we make a choice... we choose to learn how to use other kinds of compost, because it's possible, and it's not breaking the planet".

Newbery talks about the operation she runs at the farm, how she manages to grow successfully without chemicals, and her experience with peat-free compost, products, techniques and adaptations.

She revels in the idea of the flower farm as a reservoir of life and biodiversity that will act as "innoculation stations" that, come the end of the world, could seed the desert green landscapes surrounding them.

As well as growing flowers Newbery runs workshops and demonstrations on propagation and seed-saving, such as how to design a cut flower patch. Weddings and funerals account for most of her cut flower sales. Customers there usually come through word of mouth, she says, often "because they want something that has come from a garden".

Newbery has a distinctive philosophy of business and in mentoring small businesses. She encourages "the stepping away from the 'more for the sake of more' model. The key, she says, is to work out "what your 'enough' is". If you work out what your minimum need is, modest or luxurious, "whatever it is...then work out how to build a business that will pay for it". And she is fierce in her support of other small business owners who want to make a good living supplying a high quality product without endlessly having to expand.

Asked about her "flowers of the future" she says "seed sovereignty" should be the focus, with locally-grown seed, adapted to UK conditions more likely to provide "bigger, stronger" plants compared to imported options.

A new edition of her book "The Flower Farmers's Year" is out in May 2026.

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