Tuesday 23rd June The Rose Demo online

Join flower farmer and florist Georgie Newbery as she shows you how to grow, harvest and arrange with your own garden roses in this online demo. Be inspired by Georgie as she takes you through the collection of roses she grows at Common Farm Flowers, and tells you why she has chosen this mix, how she prunes them, feeds them, harvests and arranges with them. As always, if you can’t attend live you can still book your place and we will send you the recording of the session afterwards.

“Wonderful rose workshop delivered in a way which was useful to both those who may be at a beginner level or advanced level. Also treated to a live demo arrangement at the end. Georgie is a wonderfully patient and animated teacher and I would highly recommend this session to anyone who is interested in growing roses, as well as growing roses for cut flowers.”

BOOK THE ROSE DEMO HERE

Wednesday 24th June The Seed Saving Demo online

In this inspiring online session, Georgie will show you how to save, clean and store seed so you can fill your garden for free, season after season. Seed saving isn’t just thrifty, it connects you more deeply with the rhythm of your garden and gives you the satisfaction of raising plants from your very own harvest. Whether you’re new to gardening or keen to expand your skills, this demo will set you up for a lifetime of free plants and flourishing borders.

This is a new demo for 2026.

BOOK THE SEED SAVING DEMO HERE

Thursday 25th June Club Live Chat on Substack (for paid subscribers)

Our final club chat before the summer break and we are going to have a look back at all our successes of the last few months, as well as any challenges you might have had - because the Club will have solutions!

If you’ve missed any sessions this term, or you aren’t yet a paid subscriber and think you might quite like to be, you can see all the sessions from the summer term and, in fact, all of 2026 in one place - HERE!

If you want to join the club, the link is here but please join on a desktop as joining via the App will sadly cost you more than we want you to pay!

JOIN THE CLUB

And then in July:

Tuesday 7th July The Flowers For Drying Demo online

In this online demo, Georgie will share her secrets to growing and drying flowers that will bring joy all year round. Drying flowers is a wonderful way to extend the beauty of your garden and to have nature’s colour and texture at your fingertips all year. Whether you’re planning ahead for wreath-making and festive decorations, or simply want everlasting arrangements for your home, this session will give you the knowledge and inspiration you need.

This is a new demo for 2026.

BOOK THE FLOWERS FOR DRYING DEMO HERE

Demo recordings available to buy until 28th June

We had a busy June, as Georgie taught some brilliant online demos and, if you missed joining them live, you can buy them now as recordings. Simply order as if you were booking a place and we will send the recording to you as soon as we get chance:

• The Floral Tablescaping Demo

• The Big Urn Demo

• The Flying Arch of Flowers Demo

• Order all 3 recordings above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day One

• The Flowers Crowns and Corsages Demo

• The Mossed Summer Wreath Demo

• The Broken Arch of Flowers Demo

• Order all 3 recordings above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day Two)

• Order both floral arch demos as The Floral Arch Duo of Demos

• The Sowing Biennials Demo

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Information for paid subscribers

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When I started growing flowers for sale in a sustainable, artisan way as we do here at Common Farm Flowers in Somerset, it was not offered as an off-the-shelf way of earning a living as, for example, accountancy or taking to the law might be. There was no business model I could look at and adapt to my circumstances. Generally, and mostly because there was no proven model of success for the way I planned to make a living, people would tell me simply that I wouldn’t make enough money, and that setting up a flower farm was a bad idea.

I wanted to grow flowers for sale. I thought the customer base in my local area (canny country types with their own gardens already,) would not want to buy my kinds of flowers, and so I would set up a flowers-by-post business and sell to the general public throughout the UK. I had yet to learn quite how flourishing the wedding flowers business is in this area of Somerset, and I wasn’t confident that the flowers I grew in the early days would be good enough for other florists to use in wedding schemes.

In our first year we we took posies to our local farmers’ market to sell, sold sweet peas and dahlias from a barrow beside the front gate (the Kimber’s Farm Shop used to be at the end of our lane so there was good passing trade,) and as if by magic were asked to supply flowers for I think about five local weddings. We made sure the wedding commissioners knew that this was our first year growing, let alone arranging, and they kindly gave us our chance.

I was so excited that we had any customers at all, and I had yet to learn that the reason our flowers bloomed so enthusiastically was that our thick, Somerset clay is as nutritious a growing medium as we could get, and was really nothing to do with my questionable skills as a horticulturalist. This was 2010 and here we were starting a micro flower farming business just after a world financial crash - and it was great because I was so busy proving that I could I had no time for strategy, or critical thinking, or even just taking five minutes to scribble a business plan on the back of an envelope. Every time I made a sale I had a teeny dopamine hit which was totally addictive - no matter if the sale barely covered my costs... And even better, I’d found a sales channel which doubled the dopamine - oh Twitter how I loved you in those olden days.

Twitter was brilliant: you posted something like ‘I’m a flower farmer in Somerset and this is the kind of bouquet you’ll receive if you order from me’ with a picture and people ordered. Fantastic. But they didn’t just order. They said things like, did you know there’s another flower farmer working like you do in Oxfordshire, or Norfolk, or Kent, or the Pacific North West of the USA? And joy! I finally found others who were working like me - examples I could follow, successful businesses whose models could inspire mine.

And that’s where the trouble began.

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It’s British Flowers Week and we’ve filled the diary with our 3 day Eco Floristry Retreat and a Farm Tour. Both take place here at Common Farm Flowers in Somerset, and we are really looking forward to welcoming our 30+ guests to the farm over the next few days.

Places on our dates this week sold out several weeks ago now, and I know this has been disappointing for some of you. But I am very excited to announce that we’ve now added 2027 dates for these events to the website and booking for them is now live.

Read on for:

• details of the new 2027 dates

• still to come in June and July

• demo recordings now available to buy

What do you need to know about our new dates for 2027?

First of all, the dates…..

The Eco Floristry Retreat (1, 2 or 3 Days) Tuesday 15th, Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th June 2027

“I attended the 3 day Eco Floristry Retreat and this was the most positive of experiences. Georgie is an incredible teacher, mentor, and font of all knowledge. Georgie makes you feel relaxed and welcome as soon as you walk through the flower farm gates. We had the run of the garden to draw inspiration from which was an incredible experience. We created a brides bouquet, bridesmaids posy, and button hole on Day 1. Day 2 was dedicated to table displays. Day 3 focused on larger installations from a broken arch, to pedestal urns for the wow factor at any future celebration. You will leave full of contentment after the 3 days, with valuable new skills, and a warm feeling that you have had the best time at Common Farm. Thoroughly recommend.”

The Flower Farm Tour Friday 18th June 2027

“A thoroughly enjoyable and interesting tour of the flower farm. Georgie and Fabrizio are both so welcoming and knowledgeable. What they have achieved with Common Farm is extremely admirable. It was so lovely to see a flower farm with no regimented lines or acres of black membrane, just naturalistic, well thought out growing spaces with biodiversity at the core. Thank you for a lovely afternoon.”

Secondly, places are very limited

We generally have 10 people on the Eco Floristry Retreat and 20 people on a Farm Tour. Hence, they sold out this year. So, if you are really, really keen please book sooner rather than later to secure your spot.

Who can join the eco floristry retreat?

Really, anyone…..

You might be an enthusiastic amateur florist or a pro who wants to refine their sustainable floristry skills. We’ve enjoyed visits from students with no floristry experience whatsoever, friends and family helping with DIY wedding flowers, people who just want a few days out of their busy life and florists who want to learn more about creating arrangements sustainably.

Basically, if you’re interested in coming, no matter your experience, we’d make you very welcome!

Book the retreat as 1, 2 or all 3 days

The Eco Floristry Retreat can be booked as 1, 2 or 3 days - depending on which element of sustainable floristry you’d like to focus on, learn more about, practice more of…..

• Book all 3 days

• Day one: hand tied bouquets and bridal party flowers

• Day two: table centre flowers

• Day three: floral installations

If you’re booking the 3 day retreat, you can pay by instalments

If you’re interested in booking the Eco Floristry Retreat for the full 3 days and would prefer to pay in instalments, details about this are on the website. Just email nicola@commonfarmflowers.com and we can arrange this for you.

Any questions?

We are always very happy to help. Either comment here or send us an email and we can answer whatever questions you might have.

Still to come this summer

We’ve 3 more online demos to come in June and July, before we take a short break from teaching over the school holidays:

Tuesday 23rd June The Rose Demo

Wednesday 24th June The Seed Saving Demo

Tuesday 7th July The Flowers For Drying Demo

SEE ALL OUR WORKSHOPS & DEMOS

Demo recordings available to buy for a limited time

The following demos have recently taken place but the recordings are still available to buy. Simply order as if you were booking a place on the session and we will send the recording over to you as soon as we get chance.

The following recordings are available to buy until Sunday 28th June 2026:

• The Floral Tablescaping Demo

• The Big Urn Demo

• The Flying Arch of Flowers Demo

• Order all 3 recordings above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day One

• The Flowers Crowns and Corsages Demo

• The Mossed Summer Wreath Demo

• The Broken Arch of Flowers Demo

• Order all 3 recordings above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day Two)

• Order both floral arch demos as The Floral Arch Duo of Demos

• The Sowing Biennials Demo

Information for paid subscribers

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Clubbers I’ll put a reminder of all your current discount codes below the paywall in case you fancy having a little Sunday splurge.

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Once upon a time I gave a flower demo to a flower arranging group somewhere in the south west of England. This was some years ago and they invited me to bring some home-grown flowers in April and show them how I would make a bouquet. It was a good year for tulips and so I packed the back of the car with a couple of buckets of tulips and narcissi and set off into the wide blue yonder hoping as always to inspire and enable a group of interested people to make more of their garden flowers.

I highly recommend advertising yourself as a person who gives talks and demos if you’re a flower farmer. It’s a great way not only to pick up work for the coming season, but to add to your income at the same time as advertising your wares.

So far so happy. A lovely demo, the flower enthusiasts clapped when I finished, and I duly gave the bouquet I’d made to someone in the audience who had a birthday coming up.

We settled into the questions and answers part of the talk and I described how my season would evolve, the kinds of flowers I’d have to harvest in the weeks and months to come. And a little while later I drove home glowing with the general success of the evening with a modest payment for time, flowers and mileage in my pocket.

The following week I was sent a message by the lady who’d organised the talk. There would be a flower festival that summer in this village, and they were so impressed by the quality of the flowers I’d brought for my demo, would I like to supply for the flower festival?

‘But of course,’ I replied, and duly invoiced and put the date the flowers would be collected in the calendar.

A month or so later I cut the flowers ordered by this lady, and conditioned them nicely for collection. She arrived, we tucked the buckets in the back of her car, and off she went.

Now I had explained clearly at my talk the kinds of flowers I’d have at this stage of the year and so when harvesting I went full whimsy for this flower festival - after all the whole vibe of locally grown flowers allows for a lot more movement, for flowers which won’t travel out of water, flowers which are not available from importing wholesalers because they won’t last for days dry in boxes in a refrigerated articulated lorry waiting to be ordered. I cut Ammi majus, Lavatera, Bupleurum and other goodies to make a village flower festival float with a gorgeous wild feeling: long stems, perfectly conditioned, ready to take centre stage with those lovely, experienced, trained flower arranging ladies who’d been so excited by my talk earlier in the spring.

Imagine then my dismay…

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Thursday 11th June - Club Live Chat

Join Georgie and our guest for a conversation about our digital footprint and what this means for our small businesses, as well as us as individuals. Francesca joined us for a brilliant chat last year and then did an excellent talk at the Flowers from the Farm conference earlier this year. She also helped lead our Lifestyle Business Retreat in the spring (which we are repeating in the autumn) and the topic of digital footprint is one that keeps popping up, so we thought useful to give it some focused time.

JOIN THE CLUB

Friday 12th June - The Sowing Biennials Demo online

Join flower farmer and florist Georgie Newbery as she sows seed for her harvest next spring. Biennial seed sown in summer will give you a great display of flowers through spring and early summer the following year. Georgie has lots of tips and tricks to make sure seed germinates in the heat of the summer, and seedlings flourish for planting out in late summer or autumn. If you sow biennials in summer, you’ve stolen a march on the following spring.

BOOK THE SOWING BIENNIALS DEMO

The rest of this month:

Thursday 18th June - Club Live Chat

A great topic, requested by one of our paid subscribers - a Q&A session on perennials that ‘really earn their keep’.

Tuesday 23rd June - The Rose Demo online

Join Georgie as she shows you how to grow, harvest and arrange with your own garden roses in this online demo. Be inspired as Georgie takes you through the collection of roses she grows at Common Farm Flowers, and tells you why she has chosen this mix, how she prunes them, feeds them, harvests and arranges with them.

BOOK THE ROSE DEMO

Thursday 25th June - Club Live Chat

Our last live chat before the summer break will be a chance for us to get together and review how the year is going so far.

Wednesday 24th June - The Seed Saving Demo online

In this online session, Georgie will show you how to save, clean and store seed so you can fill your garden for free, season after season. You’ll learn how to identify the perfect moment to collect seeds from your flowers, simple methods for drying, cleaning, and storing seeds so they stay viable and tips for labelling and organising your seed stash for when you’re ready to sow.

BOOK THE SEED SAVING DEMO

Demo recordings now available to buy

The following demo recordings are available to buy until Sunday 28th June. Simply order as if you were booking onto the demo and we will send you the recording as soon as we get chance:

• The Floral Tablescaping Demo

• The Big Urn Demo

• The Flying Arch of Flowers Demo

• Order all 3 sessions above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day One

• The Flowers Crowns and Corsages Demo

• The Mossed Summer Wreath Demo

• The Broken Arch of Flowers Demo

• Order all 3 sessions above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day Two

• Order both floral arch demos as our Floral Arch Duo of Demos

Information for paid subscribers

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CLUBBERS I’ll pop your discounts again behind the paywall just to remind you what we have going for you at the moment.

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A flower farmer is not born perfectly formed, with horticultural expertise, a masters in marketing, and a business model honed to perfection. A flower farmer will spend years learning how to run a business which works for them, for their bank balance, and which supplies the local market with what it wants.

Along the way mistakes are made. And at the urging of one of my Club members, I am going to write a series of pieces about how I became a flower farmer, focusing on things that went wrong along the way.

A flower farm is only one so long as it is selling its product - otherwise it’s just an overblown garden - and selling the product is the most difficult part of the process for people who are often good growers but not expert in selling their produce.

And so I thought I’d start with the thorny question of money.

Now, back in the far off distant past, I used to help John Galliano run his business - this was in the John Bult investing days, before Galliano went to Givenchy. I look back in frank amazement that I was given this job, having never done more in business admin at that stage of my twenty seven year old life than work for another man as his secretary - and he went bust during the recession that hit the UK in the early ‘90s which was the reason I had moved to Paris in search of work. I must have made a convincing case for myself to be given the job, but I really shouldn’t have been. However, even back then I had a character that was convinced that I could learn on the job, wing it if you like, and that all would be well in the end.

The winging it way of working stayed with me long after I resigned from Galliano and took up writing novels for a living (another activity in which I had no training, but in which I felt a strong urge to have a go - I still feel a strong urge to have more goes at novel writing, and I need to be able to afford it… Everything goes back to £££.)

I had learned that ‘winging it’ was a good modus operandi when I moved to France in 1991. My friend Alex and I had both been working for the man who went bust, and it was she who suggested that we might have better luck with employment the other side of the Channel. Of course in those days one just loaded the car and drove to France and applied for a job - the law of the land said that people like my friend Alex and I had the right to work anywhere we liked in Europe if we could persuade an employer to hire us. Alex is half French, had read French at University, and so was quickly taken on by a merchant bank as a trainee analyst. I spoke D grade A level French, and was much less employable. But I stuck at it, and the employment agency we’d both gone to eventually found me a job at the photocopying company Gestetner in the eastern suburbs of Paris. By the time I was fired from this job for, you guessed it, having very bad French, three months later, my French had, in fact, improved a bit. And so when I rang another friend (there had been quite an exodus of people I knew from recession-hit London to a Paris where being able to call oneself ‘bi-lingue,’ made one employable,) in tears, almost admitting defeat, and she said, ‘There’s a job here at American Vogue if you want,’ I grabbed another bite at the croissant.

To my astonishment, the late, great Melle Susan Train of American Vogue gave me the job of being her assistant. And so it was confirmed in my mind that ‘winging it,’ was absolutely the way to function. Learn on the job. Fake it till you make it. My already ‘have a go’ M.O. was confirmed to me as the way to work.

Some years later I was offered the job helping Galliano run his business. I swung into my office in the Passage de la Main d’Or with all the confidence a career of successful winging could bestow. I will admit: I was not enormously successful at helping Galliano with his business. A year there and I’d had enough. So I swung right out and declared I’d write my first novel.

Now this, again, worked out, in a way… Well, I published three novels in four years. I never made enough money to be able to carry on writing novels in this way for the rest of my life, but in those days I pretty much lived on broccoli and other peoples’ expense accounts and a bicycle meant living in London (yes, back to London now,) was more affordable than you might think.

And so at last to Somerset. By now the winging it habit was fully ingrained. But there was more at stake: a hefty mortgage, children who could reasonably expect to be fed on a regular basis, grown up life. If I had stopped to think, I might have seen that any venture I took on now would need to be strategised carefully, and possibly include an honest business plan.

How did I become a flower farmer?

Well, by the time I started selling the flowers I grew Fabrizio and I had been living in our falling down farmhouse (more on the reality of this dream perhaps another day,) for six years. It had been almost derelict when we bought it, and we soon learned that the reason it and its acreage were so (relatively) cheap was that this land is in fact marshland made of thick clay which is under an inch or two of water in winter and then dries to a cracked desert in the summer. Twenty two years of improving the soil now makes it a decent place to farm for flowers. Not so much then. But we were neighbours of Charles Dowding’s and his raised bed system was not difficult to emulate. We started bringing in truckloads of municipal green waste compost to help break up the clay. And soon we had a functioning vegetable garden about the size of a tennis court with lots of flowers dotted about it because I really much preferred growing flowers to veg. Why flowers over veg? Because they flower quickly and so are good for a woman with a relatively short attention span. Because you didn’t have to persuade people to eat them. Because when I had too many I could stick them outside the front of the house in a barrow and people would buy them. How I loved the satisfying jingle of pound coins in the honesty box Fabrizio drilled into one side of the front porch when people stopped to buy my sweet peas.

And so the flower farm evolved. I’d been selling my surplus flowers at the front gate for a season or two when I was sent a bouquet through the post and had an absolute lightbulb moment. ‘I could do this,’ I thought, looking at the bouquet recover from its journey in a big vase of water. I then looked up on line to see what the price had been - this seemed at the time a bit of a mean thing to do, but if this vague idea of becoming a flower farmer myself was to become a reality I needed to see what others charged for this kind of product. I was impressed. The sum charged was hefty.

And here came my first mistake…

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Club live sessions in June

Our club live sessions are weekly (term time) hour long sessions for paid subscribers here on Substack.

Taking place each Thursday at 5pm, we focus on different topics each week. Some are question and answer sessions, some weeks we enjoy the company of special guests and we try and ensure we do a live demo each term too.

If yo…

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Let’s throw our minds back to spring 2025. I’ve just stepped up to the board of Flowers from the Farm, and at my first board meeting I ask whether we ought not to do Chelsea from time to time.

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We have 6 online demos taking place this week. If you want to do any of the sessions but can’t join live we always record them and send the recordings out shortly after the session has taken place, so you don’t need to miss out. All these sessions are suitable for those with and without experience of flower arranging. Each demo lasts 90 minutes.

Any questions please just ask.

Tuesday 2nd June

The Floral Tablescaping Demo

Find out how you can create stunning flower arrangements to decorate your wedding or event table, with no floral foam, just perfectly sustainable mechanics and fresh garden flowers.

The Big Urn Demo

Find out what to cut from your garden, how many stems you’ll need, and how to put those stems into water to make a fantastic, huge, urn arrangement, using only sustainable mechanics.

The Flying Arch of Flowers Demo

Join Georgie Newbery as she shows you how to create a stunning floral arch using beams and buckets and pieces of string as well as lovely flowers and foliage cut straight from her garden. Also available as a discounted duo of arch demos.

(Book all 3 sessions above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day One)

Wednesday 3rd June

The Flowers Crowns and Corsages Demo

Join this demo and find out how to create exquisite flower crowns and elegant corsages, perfect for weddings, parties, festivals, or simply for the sheer delight of wearing flowers.

The Mossed Summer Wreath Demo

Celebrate summer with this creative project, whilst learning sustainable floristry skills at the same time, as Georgie demos the the art of making a stunning (responsibly sourced) mossed wreath the eco-friendly way, with no floral foam and no wire, just gorgeous homegrown materials.

The Broken Arch of Flowers Demo

Join Georgie for this session where she’ll demonstrate creating a fashionable broken floral arch for a wedding or event. Using simple sustainable mechanics, fresh garden flowers and foliage, and no floral foam, Georgie will make the arch for you so that you can understand how to do it yourself. Also available as a discounted duo of arch demos.

(Book all 3 sessions above as The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day Two)

2026 WORKSHOP & DEMO CALENDAR

Information for paid subscribers

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These demos are aimed at enthusiastic flower arrangers and florists, keen to learn more about sustainable floristry practice, whether you are arranging as a paid role or simply because you enjoy doing it. Our online demos attract a range of students, from around the world!

Each demo lasts around 90 minutes. If you can’t attend live, we always record our sessions and send them out shortly afterwards so you can catch up with them in your own time. Sessions cost £45 each (paid subscribers here on Substack get 10% discount) but we’ve bundled some sessions together at a discounted price.

Here’s what’s coming up.

Sustainable floristry demos in June

Tuesday 2nd June

The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day One

Join Georgie for this full day of demos (or catch up in your own time), which includes the 3 sessions listed below. Or book the demos individually if you prefer.

The Floral Tablescaping Demo 10am

The Big Urn Demo 12:30pm

The Flying Arch of Flowers Demo 2:30pm

Wednesday 3rd June

The Sustainable Floristry Trio of Demos - Day Two

Join Georgie for this full day of demos (or catch up in your own time), which includes the 3 sessions listed below. Or book the demos individually if you prefer.

The Flowers Crowns and Corsages Demo 10am

The Mossed Summer Wreath Demo 12:30pm

The Broken Arch of Flowers Demo 2:30pm

You can book both the floral arch demos as a discounted package here.

Other online demos in June:

Friday 12th June The Sowing Biennials Demo

Tuesday 23rd June The Rose Demo

Wednesday 24th June The Seed Saving Demo

SEE OUR FULL 2026 CALENDAR

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