Carol's Garden

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Carol's Garden

Home grown fresh scented garden & wild flowers with character
Wedding, event, bouquet, by the bunch or bucket
Workshops, talks & visits
W Cheshire

20/08/2026

A morning in the life of a flower farmer in late summer 2026.
1. Picking towering Macleyea, reflecting the shape & early autumnal tints of the silver birch beyond
2. Second trolley of late summer pickings, perennial and a few annuals. Brown grass.
3. Beautifully fading planting of Zizia and Pimpinella, with a few little willowherb seedheads for extra texture
4. A proper downpour. Just a few soaking minutes, but nothing at all quarter of a mile over the hill. Just in time to catch us out in the field, but no one minded.

11/07/2026

Favourite couple of buckets from this week. A week of lots of colour - everyone wanting sunset shades, corals, oranges and pinks at the moment. We grow lots, but seemingly never quite enough orange until Rudbeckias and Dahlias start.

08/07/2026

Good drying weather.
I wasn’t intending to dry much this year because we have to be cleared out of the site by end October. But, well, it’s the ideal weather for it. Once we’d finished the early morning fresh picking of course. 🥵

03/07/2026

A little glimpse around the workshop yesterday. Lots of colour, lots of froth and silken mallows, as well as the first dahlias and zinnias. Feeling like a hot summer already.

23/05/2026

Just appreciating our polytunnels. I’ll miss them when we leave here. Always important to allow space for some fruit and veg. And you can’t beat just-picked strawberries, still warm from the heat of the tunnel. No sprays, no chemicals, no work tbh. Just water, pick and eat 🍓

30/04/2026

I’d never grown Icelandic poppies before I started growing flowers to sell. There are lots of varieties I wouldn’t necessarily grow in a garden or even home cutting patch. Too expensive, too fussy, too tall, too much work, too much water etc etc. I’ve thought about this a lot as I’ve been planning my retreat from cutting flowers for a living. I look at stems as I cut. Will they make the new, selected list? Most won’t, but Iceland poppies do.
That heart-lifting colour and fragile texture, addictive peppery and unmistakable scent. I have a selection of green glass vases for them and I’ll always try to grow some of these absolute beauties. I may actually have had such a big vase of poppies in mind when we designed our new (not quite finished) kitchen.

28/04/2026

The top of our shrub and perennial field. Just shy of an acre, packed with trees, shrubs and hardy perennials. Too many, if I’m honest. Pretty much all bought as small or bare root plants, or grown from seed or cuttings. But all planted by us since 2016, specifically for cutting for sale. No lovely mature inherited shrubs. Except the beautiful oaks of course!
People ask me for suggestions for foliage or blossom but this is why I can’t really say. There are quick and easy plants, the ones everyone grows. But I’ve spent years searching out less common varieties, working out my successions, propagating the best examples, to give me something to cut in the colours, shapes and times of year that I think will sell. I don’t know how many varieties there are. There was an original plan, but I’ve tweaked and adapted it every year since then. So no short easy ‘top 3’ lists, sorry. And how dull would it be if everyone grew the same. 💚

27/04/2026

Big old order for a brand and industry event last week. Brief was for whites, yellows, every shade of foliage from yellow through acid green, to browns and grey. Lots of woody foliage, flowers too, picked ready for maximum impact in a big space and to complement bold imported flowers to be added in.
We have planted lots of shrubs and trees over the last 15 years - and especially when we took on an extra field specifically for woody and herbaceous perennials in 2016. So most of this came from that field - hardy, resilient plants, growing without inputs or irrigation. And perfect when we want to pull together an order like this at pretty short notice.

24/04/2026

When you haven’t picked the Icelandic poppies for 2 days….
Just lovely pastel colours from . Especially love the soft lemons ✨

22/04/2026

We picked loads of these today. I’ve always loved growing ‘ordinary’ ranunculus and they’ve been so popular and such fantastic cut flowers. I was never convinced about butterflies- too fussy and too shiny. How wrong can I be?! I tried a few given to me by NW king of butterflies, John , then I bought a much bigger batch last year. Late ordering, I didn’t get first pick of the colours. But then last summer, uncertain of my future here, I was late again and missed the cut on main wholesale suppliers. But Cel had Growers Packs which tempted me to invest more. Turned out that last year’s, left in the ground in the polytunnel all year, came back brilliantly and just as good as the new ones. So now I’ve got lots! 😂 Good thing they’re so popular ✂️✂️

Address

Harthill
Chester
CH39LF

Telephone

+447500113618

Website

http://carolsgarden.co.uk/

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