Our Story: Chapter 1

Beginnings

There was a point in 2017 when Martyn gave me the “sell them or grow less” ultimatum…

Fairly soon after I moved to Cumbria in 2009 to live with Martyn, (we met on the internet that’s another chapter ) we took on a very overgrown, very large allotment in our village. We grew vegetables and flowers, and enjoyed watching the wildlife thrive. Many of you will relate to the pleasure of oogling at seed catalogues, nurturing seedlings and picking gluts of produce. It was my hobby, I swapped seedlings with colleagues at the council (I was Art Officer for Allerdale) and I dreamt of growing flowers for a living. We dreamt of flower fields, some woodland and hens, but I couldn’t see a way of making enough money for it to be a viable option, especially with Cumbria’s summer season being so short and variable.

Creating our family was very difficult. I took redundancy (without any mega payout I hasten to add, as I’d only been in the post 4 years) to be with our baby boy Jacob. I was stressed and had had a miscarriage, so we cut our cloth accordingly, and then spent three years struggling through back to back pregnancies, involving still birth, premature births and a lot of trauma. Growing flowers brought me a lot of joy during this time. Sowing seeds, watching them grow, the abundance, the colour, the vitality… I grew a LOT of flowers!

In 2017 a friend left me her polytunnel when she moved abroad, and I realised that I could very significantly extend the season with undercover space.

With *that* ultimatum in 2017, Cumberland Flower Farm was launched in Spring 2018.

At that time we were farmless, growing (with permission) on two allotments equalling 1/4 acre. We had a 6 year old, a 3 year old and a 2 year old, and we needed the money. We seized every opportunity and sold every stem. I grew and arranged our wedding flowers, supplied bunches to Booths in Keswick, Westmorland Services and No.11 (now No.15 ) in Cockermouth. Demand and interest grew.

We were onto something…

-Harriet x