Hello
My name's Katie & I have spent most of my life staring into space in one garden or another. My work with plants and flowers is a lifelong obsession, fostered by my parents and generously tolerated by my family, who are quite used to me disappearing off for the five minutes that always seem to turn into hours.
I live in Acomb, in York and can think of nowhere else I'd rather be. If somebody would like to open an Italian restaurant here, I'd realistically hardly ever need to leave.
A bit about my approach to sustainability
Sustainability is a tricky word. Like many 'green' words, it has been commandeered by industry and is often a meaningless, vague thing which is used to imply that a company is doing their bit and taking responsibility for their own actions. My own approach to sustainability is to be as open as possible about what I can and can't do. Horticulture as a whole is a pretty resource intensive industry, so we have made as many decisions as we can to lower the impact we have on the planet. We have been peat-free for over five years, store around 3,000 litres of rainwater, reuse plastic for as long as possible and avoid bringing new plastics into the mix as often as we can. This often means our processes are longer than they might otherwise be - we choose to weed, rather than use weed-suppressant membrane, for example - but this is a conscious choice that we have made, and we are happy with it.
We have also made a decision to be almost entirely circular - with a commitment to reduce the amounts of compost we bring in, and composting everything on site - nothing (ish) in, nothing out (bar the final product). Happily, we are on the site of a livery where we have access to as much manure as we can barrow!
Our use of chemicals and treatments is limited, with zero pesticide use and seaweed-based products our preferred feeds. Rather than obsessively cultivate the entire acre, we will be putting a small section of the field to meadow, recognising the benefits to the area as a whole in taking a laissez-faire approach to grass cutting and allowing butterflies, moths, grasshoppers and beetles to thrive. The less said about the voles the better, although I have secret hopes of attracting owls in - certainly the sparrowhawks and the cat that likes to visit from the village seem to find them pretty tasty.
At the final stage, all our plants are potted into reuseable plastic pots in peat-free soil, with many pots being returned to be washed and reused again. Since many of our plants are 'to order', we are often able to deliver without plastic as bare roots, and those plants that are unsold are put back into the soil when out of season. Our long-term commitment to produce c. 75% perennial cut flowers continues. I anticipate our 2028 field will be close to this goal.
The flowers are nearly all used in York, with our wholesale offer going out to the York Flower Collective. Our bunches and bouquets are all delivered plastic free and as they are not treated with pesticides, they can safely be home composted. We never use floral foam and are always keen to discuss alternatives for larger scale work.
If you are interested in visiting the field for a more in depth discussion on our practices and principles, do get in touch.
Contact
Please get in touch if you have a community-based project I can get over invested in, I would really hate to get to the bottom of my to do list.