'We want everyone to have a magical time': Life at the smartest flower farm in the Cotswolds

Shane Connolly, florist By Royal Appointment, has been saying that flowers should be ‘grown not flown’ for years. ‘I have been preaching British since the early 2000s and certainly promoted it at the wedding of The King and Queen in 2005, even more so for The Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011.’ For the 2023 coronation, all the flowers were grown in the British Isles and it seems that this example is changing the way we buy cut flowers.

More than 80% is still imported from Holland, the global market leader, but Brexit, concerns about sustainability and the influence of Mr Connolly are shifting habits. Since 2011, when Gill Hodgson set up trade association Flowers from the Farm, more than 1,000 local growers selling fresh homegrown bunches have joined, with more being added all the time.

Smaller growers come and go, but, at Chippy Flower Farm near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, there is a proper business plan. It looks as if this is a flower farm that will succeed. Tif Loehnis and Anna Benn, who set it up four years ago, have a more professional approach than many, with a strategy for long-term survival.

It helps that the acre where the flowers are grown already belonged to Mrs Loehnis’s family, because starting a flower farm is expensive. Initial outlay involved deer and rabbit fencing, a polytunnel, a shed for the welcoming shop, another for preparing and arranging flowers and a third for teaching days. Council waste had to be spread over planting areas and containers for enough water installed. Once the infrastructure of paths and plant supports had gone in, shrubs were chosen for shelter, as well as to provide backing material for home-grown bunches, and masses and masses of perennials and bulbs had to be bought.

Mrs Loehnis had been a successful literary agent; Ms Benn is a garden designer with huge practical experience, and both acknowledge that they couldn’t survive without their wonderful team of supporters and gardeners. However, what they have achieved is impressive: after only three years, they were breaking even — this year, they should make a profit.

I went to see them on a sunny autumn day when the picking season was almost over (the farm closes from the end of October until the start of March), but there was still plenty to see and buy and flowers are usually available to order online until December.

I was interested to know where their customers come from and imagined that, because they are less than 10 minutes from Soho Farmhouse in the heart of the richest Cotswold area, that their target would be wealthy weekenders.

‘Far from it,’ said Mrs Loehnis. 'We want to do local weddings and we also welcome people coming to pick their own.;

Both feel that a visit to the farm ought to be enjoyable. There is a pick-your-own enclosure that has recently been expanded and people who need more help can order a bucket full of already conditioned flowers and foliage in their chosen colour scheme, which they can then arrange themselves. It’s an economical and sustainable way of providing flowers for an event, as well as giving any occasion a much more personal feel. For those with less confidence at floristry, bouquets and posies can be made to order.

Ms Benn is chief grower and her plant palette is huge and varied. The farm is organic, which can make control of pests and diseases difficult at the start, but as biodiversity increases even slugs should soon be a thing of the past. She chooses plants that have many seasons of interest, as well as a long vase life, and is quick to dismiss anything that is not working.

There are the usual foliage favourites, such as eucalyptus, alongside some things you would never find in a flower shop. Raspberry leaves, snowberry and herbs — especially mint for scent — are regularly included in mixed bunches. I saw hips and haws and species roses and plenty of grasses and, from every roof in the three sheds, flowers were hung out to dry. ‘We like dead beauty,’ Mrs Loehnis says, and you can’t help agreeing when there are perfect alliums like falling fireworks and loops and giant mossed balls of everlasting flowers above your head.

There was a workshop on drying flowers planned and another on wreaths before Christmas; this year various gardening, painting and arranging sessions were held. Chippy Flower Farm seems to generate enthusiasm and excitement. ‘We want everyone to have a magical time here,’ Mrs Loehnis adds. Perhaps because everyone who works there seems to be enjoying what they do enormously, the customers are happy, too.

See more about Chippy Flower Farm in Little Tew, Oxfordshire at www.chippyflowerfarm.co.uk

Chippy’s flower recommendations

• Best annuals for picking Daucus carota for being beautiful at all stages, clary sage for sowing itself so reliably, corncockle for airy elegance and helichrysum, which is enjoying a renaissance as fashionable dried flowers, but is also lovely and useful fresh. ‘A new one for us last year was Amberboa muricata ‘Desert Star’, which had a really long picking season’
• Best perennials for cutting Patrinia scabiosifolia is a great and less well-known late-flowering filler. Geums come to the rescue in May with pretty accents when everyone wants flowers, but their gardens haven’t got going yet. Sorrel, left to go to seed, produces amazing limey-bronze spikes. Limonium tatarica (sea lavender) is pure dried-flower gold
• Reliable foliage for floristry Alchemilla mollis for zinginess, snowberry and flowering currant for plugging the May gap and senecio for being a year-round workhorse. Osmanthus burkwoodii has many seasons of usefulness. ‘We also use lots of herbs’
• Conditioning tips Burning the ends of Icelandic poppies with a match is essential to ensure long vase life. ‘We dip lots of stems in boiling water, too: a couple of seconds for flowers and longer for woodier stems. Hydrangeas and orlaya get