In my early twenties, I trained in a traditional florist where I fell in love with flowers, creativity and the feeling they evoke in people. I often travelled to New Covent Garden Flower Market with my mentor and good friend Sue. The atmosphere was something special. There was a real sense of camaraderie between the traders, porters and buyers.

But, looking back I also remember how the flowers had travelled for days in huge amounts of plastic wrapping and not a single insect in sight.

With the idea of growing flowers for cutting becoming a valid business plan, conversations between Neil and myself changed to those of sustainability, working without pesticides and chemicals, and promoting locally-grown cut flowers.

Neil and I met through a conversation about mulch, so it only seemed natural that our conventions continued to be about building a life and a business together that would include a lot of compost!

With the backing of our families, we started working on the flower farm layout through the winter and, gradually, as the ground dried up we put up poly tunnels and made the field beds.

Little Routh Flower Farm was born.

Why we do it -

The background of Little Routh is about more than growing flowers. It is about creating a life that feels closer to nature and sharing some of that feeling with others: a sense of wonder, anticipation and the simple pleasure of noticing what each season brings.

As we began this new venture, we made two promises. The first to the small piece of land in our care - no chemical pesticides, no synthetic fertilisers and no single-use plastic. And the second to our customers - to evoke a feeling. We want our flowers to make people feel, be it joy and excitement, sadness, regret or nostalgia or simply a connection to something natural.