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Ep. 46: Secrets From The Flower Farm Down Under With Rebecca Starling
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Ever wondered what it takes to transition from a corporate career to a flourishing flower farm? Join us as we chat with Rebecca Starling, an inspiring flower farmer from Australia who transitioned from a corporate career in London to flower farming in rural Australia. Rebecca shares her heartfelt journey, including the romantic twist that led her to embrace a new life on her husband's fifth-generation family farm.
Rebecca gives us a sneak peek into her upcoming book, Secrets from the Flower Farm, which is filled with insights on growing stunning, fragrant cut flowers and promoting sustainable gardening practices. The book is set to release on March 4th, 2025 in the Northern Hemisphere and is already available in Australia.
Throughout the episode, Rebecca discusses her diverse experiences gardening in different climates, from the UK to Switzerland, Connecticut, and finally Australia. She emphasizes the importance of adapting gardening techniques to local conditions and shares valuable tips on growing a variety of flowers, including Mediterranean perennials, North American prairie perennials, and Australian and South African native plants.
Rebecca also talks about the challenges and rewards of flower farming in a remote area, her approach to no-till farming, and the importance of perennials in her garden. She highlights some of her favorite perennials, such as salvias, geraniums, lavender, and echinacea, and shares her excitement about new trends in flower fashion.
As a flower farmer, Rebecca has diversified her business by offering market bunches, wedding flowers, dried flowers, and even dahlia tubers and seeds. She discusses the unique opportunities and challenges of running a flower farm in a small town and her efforts to promote local flower farming.
Be sure to tune in to hear Rebecca's heartwarming story, expert tips, and passion for sustainable flower farming. Don't miss this vibrant and informative episode!
Show Notes: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/2025/01/21/ep-46-starling-flowers-secrets-from-the-flower-farm/
Learn More About Starling Flowers:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starlingflowers_/
- Web: https://starlingflowers.com.au/
- Secrets From The Flower Farm Book: https://amzn.to/4g9t6XP
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Transcript
Introduction to the Backyard Bouquet Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Backyard Bouquet podcast, where stories bloom from local flower fields and home gardens. I'm your host, Jennifer Galitzia of the Flowering Farmhouse.
Heartfelt Flower Farming Journeys
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm a backyard gardener turned flower farmer located in Hood River, Oregon. Join us for heartfelt journeys shared by flower farmers and backyard gardeners. Each episode is like a vibrant garden, cultivating wisdom and joy through flowers.
Tales and Tips on Cut Flower Growing
00:00:28
Speaker
From growing your own backyard garden to supporting your local flower farmer,
00:00:32
Speaker
The backyard bouquet is your fertile ground for heartwarming tales and expert cut flower growing advice. All right flower friends, grab your gardening gloves, garden snips, or your favorite vase because it's time to let your backyard bloom.
Interview with Rebecca Starling
00:00:55
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of the Backyard Bouquet podcast. Today we're going down under to chat with Rebecca Starling, the extraordinary flower farmer from Australia who swapped out her corporate career for dungarees to pursue her passion for gardening and flower farming.
00:01:14
Speaker
Rebecca is here today to give us a sneak peek into her upcoming book, Secrets from the Flower Farm, which is set to release on March 4 in the northern hemisphere.
Rebecca's Book on Sustainable Flower Farming
00:01:24
Speaker
It's actually already available in Australia. Rebecca's book is filled with insights on growing stunning, fragrant cut flowers and pushing the boundaries of traditional gardening towards more sustainable practices. Rebecca is truly pioneering a flower revolution.
00:01:41
Speaker
Without further ado, let's welcome Rebecca. It's such an honor to be chatting with you today. Thanks for joining us from Australia. It's a pleasure. I'm really excited to be here. I'm so excited to chat with you and to learn more about your book and your whole story of flower
Rebecca's Transition from Corporate to Flower Farming
00:01:58
Speaker
farming. I mean, you don't have a traditional path into farming. So if we can, let's start by going back to when you decided to make the leap from the corporate world to the flower fields. What inspired you to make this transition?
00:02:14
Speaker
Well, I suppose the inspiration um came from from love. I met my husband in London because I'm British um a long, long time ago and we started dating and um he took me one Christmas out to the flower farm in Australia and said, look, if we get married, this is where we'll live. I'm the fifth generation family farmer And yes, I'm working in finance at the moment in London, but this is where my heart is. And this is where I want to yeah live when I grow up, I guess. um It sounds like a Hallmark movie. ah Well, a little bit, but it's true. um And he said, so you need to feel comfortable about about living here and being sort of young and not really thinking through the consequences. I said, yes, of course, of course I'll leave my corporate career and
00:03:06
Speaker
that thing that I worked so hard and studied so hard to to achieve. But actually, it was the best thing that could have possibly happened um ah for me. And I love every second. um But from the moment when we married, and it was about 10 years until we ended up moving to the farm. So I had plenty of time to plan what I'd be doing ah when we arrived.
00:03:32
Speaker
And the farm is relatively rural, our nearest neighbor is three kilometers away, and there's only really 5,000 people in the immediate sort of area, so within within an hour, I guess, half an hour to an hour. So um I knew I couldn't ah continue my corporate career. I love gardening, and I started studying with the Royal Horticultural Society. That's the organization that runs Chelsea Flower Show, and they have amazing online learning.
00:04:00
Speaker
o And so I did that when we were living in the
Gardening Across Continents
00:04:04
Speaker
UK. And then I moved ah to Switzerland, um and I was ah running a boarding school in um Upper a Swiss Mountain, really. And so all of a sudden, the the conditions were very different, of course.
00:04:18
Speaker
snow for so many months over winter. But then also, even in the summer, the swing between the um with the warm days and the cool nights meant that growing conditions were but really very different to Barmee, UK, where it's either just rained raining or about to rain, and it makes it so easy to grow flowers because everything's so green and lush.
00:04:41
Speaker
um And then after Switzerland, we moved to Connecticut, um which again, wintry, snowy and ah winters, but really quite humid summers, and again, a very different set of um conditions. And then I was so lucky in America because I wasn't working, so I joined the Master Gardener program.
00:05:00
Speaker
and became a master gardener and ah went every day to the New York Botanic Gardens which are just amazing and studied landscape design and horticulture and garden history and so many wonderful wonderful things. And just being in those gardens and walking around and looking at the plants and seeing the seasons was just so inspirational. um And it was at that time where I was thinking very much about becoming a landscape designer.
00:05:31
Speaker
and I didn't really join the dots and thought that in Australia I would need to have neighbors and people to then be able to offer my landscape design services too. And when there's no people around, there's sort of a bit of a disconnect there. And I think that dawned on me at some point when we did another visit back to see James's family um on the farm. And something wasn't quite feeling right and then um the one weekend um a few weeks after that visit we were driving up ah to Vermont to look at the fall color and passing lots of roadside stalls and this was over a decade ago and so the flower farming movement
00:06:09
Speaker
wasn't as established as it was now. And I was seeing people who were selling their pumpkins and other full produce from their farm stands, but also buckets and buckets and buckets of flowers, dahlias and zinnias and rebeccia. And I was fascinated and we stopped at one of them and I said to the lady, well, do you really sell many of these flowers? And she said, well, no, of course it's ah it's our biggest seller. It's what people come to us for.
00:06:33
Speaker
And then the penny dropped, and I realized that's what I'd do. I'd i'd grow flowers. um It cost my husband his bull paddock, um just an open, uncultivated piece of land. But that was the spot that then ultimately became the flower farm. Oh, that's amazing. So how many years later did you finally move to Australia after that? um After being in America, it was two or three years. So we have been where we've been on the farm now for six years.
Establishing a Family Flower Farm in Australia
00:07:01
Speaker
Wow. And you have quite the background. So not only do you have the corporate business experience, but you have trained and learned through, I apologize, help me say it again through, it's the Royal hor Horticulture.
00:07:17
Speaker
Royal Horticultural Society. People refer to it as the RHS. And they run Chelsea Flower Show and they've got lots of gardens in the UK and they are a wealth of knowledge. They've got a really great website. So they're Britain's um go-to expert on gardening.
00:07:37
Speaker
I would love to go to the Chelsea Flower Show someday. That's a bucket list item for me. Absolutely. So you've done that. You're a U.S. Master Gardener, which is also another incredible program. And so you've had all of this experience that you took to Australia with you. And this is a sixth generation farm. Is that what you said? Yes, that's right. Yes. So what is the farm bin?
00:08:02
Speaker
The farm has been sheep and cattle. okay I think when I arrived with my crazy idea of growing flowers, the local farmers looked at me like I was totally crazy. They just couldn't understand how this would work. um But they've now actually, um ah quite a few of them, especially since the book has come out, they say, well, we were sorry. It can be done. We didn't expect it. We thought that this country could only look after livestock and cropping. that um But yeah, it's obviously possible. That's amazing. How many years ago was that that you moved to Australia? ah Six years ago. Okay, so six years ago you started the flower farm. You're right on the same journey line as I am with my flower journey I started six years ago too. So it's amazing how much can happen in six years.
00:08:50
Speaker
isn't it? And it can happen in fits and starts and you can think it so hard and then all of a sudden you have an aha moment and you learn a tip to growing something in your area or you find a plant that grows really well for you or something that you truly love and then you're off. um It's amazing.
00:09:09
Speaker
So the space you're growing in used to be used for cattle and sheep. Was it just prime ready for flowers or did you have to do anything to cultivate the ground?
00:09:22
Speaker
Oh my goodness. it was um It was a piece of land that runs through our farm, which is a bit sandier than the other land. um So that's one of the reasons why we chose it. It's bordered on one side by native forests. So we've got lots of eucalyptus trees there, and there's a family of kookaburras that live in the trees.
00:09:44
Speaker
um And they have a funny um way of um of making a call that looks like a laugh. And I used to feel that that in the beginning days that whenever I did something stupid, the Kookaburras would laugh at me. And I'm sure it's coincidental, but it did feel like that.
00:09:59
Speaker
And then on the other side of um the farm, the flower farm block is an old orchard. So lots of beautiful fruit trees, lovely blossom. And those two um sides of the farm is where the wind comes from it, because it's quite windy, because we're quite close to the paste.
00:10:17
Speaker
So that means that the flowers are a lot more protected. But the land itself was really sandy, gray sand, very little nutrients. And Australia is known for its very poor soils. um So I've put 90 tons of compost um onto the three acre block. yeah um And so um it's now like chocolate cake. It's rich and crumbly and just like you wanted. And it's full of um insect life under the soil um whereas before there was nothing there and also there were no birds there was no noise and so while it was lovely being this bucolic pasture ah with the cows um there wasn't very much growing there other than annual grasses.
00:11:00
Speaker
Of course, those annual grasses over, I don't know how many hundreds of years, dropped their seeds and so the seed bank is immense and I will never beat it. So weeding is one of my challenges. But going to no dig and putting layers of compost on top of the beds and every time I rotate a crop has meant that the weeds are becoming less and less and less each season.
00:11:24
Speaker
That's amazing. That's encouraging to hear as I am starting over on a barren piece of land that has lots of weeds. Your land that's very similar to how my land looks. I might be calling on you a few times this year for some advice. Glad to. yeah So you are no-till on your farm.
No-Till Farming Practices
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
until as soon as once the land's been broken up once and we've cut through those weeds those grass roots then we know till after that so but we couldn't do we yeah the the land needed to be broken up that first time.
00:11:58
Speaker
Of course, yeah. i was That was an interesting revelation for me when I got our farmland this time around because on a small plot, I could silage tarp and then break it up. But this time with so much land, there was no way without telling to get into that, especially when it's sat bake vacant for so long.
00:12:18
Speaker
I totally agree and what I found the best approaches and before you do that first tale is to put a thick layer of compost on top and then you're not just breaking up the the weed and grass roots, you're incorporating deeper that first layer of compost and then you can lay the second layer um on top. That works for me. That's great advice. So what are you growing on your three acres?
Planning the Farm for Bouquets
00:12:43
Speaker
I like to say I grow the bouquet and I very much plan the farm with the end bouquet in mind. So for each season, I think about vocal filler foliage. I think about a colour palette that's going to work for that season.
00:12:59
Speaker
I think about having a variety of shapes. And then with that end bouquet or bouquets, because obviously I need to do lots of different things for different people, I work back and then that forms my planting plan. Lots of things like roses, um Mediterranean perennials and then what I call the North American Prairie perennials like Echinacea, Rebecca, yeah and they're the permanent plantings on the farm, um but then the annuals we swap out each year and that's how we bring variety. um But I do love perennial plants because because I think just in terms of work management and just having something that's easier um on the flower farmer is really nice to have things things that are a bit less lower maintenance.
00:13:43
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, because I've been on lease land until now, I've primarily been annual crops. And so now I have this huge stack of perennial books sitting on my tabletop. And that's what I've been doing before we were chatting as I was looking through all these perennials because the idea of having plants that come back every year is so alluring, especially when you have to deal with high weed pressure to be able to keep something in the ground. What are your favorite perennials that you grow?
00:14:13
Speaker
i'm going to make a list here. I have so many. so i Let's start off with the Mediterranean perennials because in my brain I think about it in the two groups. um I love growing the Mediterranean perennials because the Mediterranean climate is very similar to my climate and so I think that's a good way of selecting. Choose plants that come from places with weather similar to yours. So for me the Mediterranean perennials are really drought and heat tolerant. There's salvias. I love there's a velvet salvia. I'm going to pronounce the Latin name wrong, but it's salvia lucantha. And then there's other salvias that are called the blue blue stem. I particularly like a variety called blue beza.
00:14:57
Speaker
I interplant those between my roses because the salvias give off this sulfur compound, which helps with black spots. oh And so interplanted with the roses, they work, um they're a nice companion plant. And also I find that the time of the year where I'm cutting my roses, um the salvias are looking good too. So just in terms of ease and speed of harvesting, that works really well um as well.
00:15:21
Speaker
geraniums are another really good crop. And I particularly love the rose-centred ones um because they work well with unscented flowers like dahlias. And yeah, I don't know about you, but when when I see somebody receiving a bunch of flowers, they bring them up to their face to smell. And I think it's always, I feel a bit of a fraud somebody when i sometimes when I give people dahlias and there's no smell, so at least the geranium comes through. um But other other herbs work well, they're not perennials, but ah flowering herbs like basil, coriander also can bring some some fragrances in. But back to the perennials, what else do I really love? Lavender, I really love. um I grow a lot of
00:16:05
Speaker
Australian and South African native plants, which are perennial. um So if you're living in a colder climate, you might they might not work, but lots of them go down to a cold tolerant to minus seven Celsius. So I'm not sure what that is in Fahrenheit, which I am quick.
00:16:26
Speaker
about minus seven, and that's 19 Fahrenheit. okay um So um not not super cold tolerant, but then you can grow other ones as annuals such as ah Billy Buttons, even Kangaroo Paws, Eucalyptus, the eucalyptta sorry, Eucalyptus annuals and that works um really well.
00:16:49
Speaker
um other um perennials.
Favorite Perennials and Their Beauty
00:16:52
Speaker
I love something called digiplexis. Have you had a digiplexis? It's between the standard digitalis, which is foxglove, and the plant's called isoplexis, which has come from the Canary Islands. And the clever plant breeders have crossed them. And so it's formed a plant which looks like has the similar flower shape to a foxglove but is perennial um and flowers for four or five months of the year in my climate and has the most amazing raspberry kind of rich peach color tones, um dusky pinks, all the sorts of colors I'm looking for at the moment, um and nice tall long spikes so I'm really loving those at the moment. In fact there's quite a lot of foxgloves that are
00:17:44
Speaker
different to the normal ones. I'm on a Fox club, fangirling on the Fox clubs at the moment. I grew, I don't know which Friday it was, I only grew one Fox club last year, but it's my first time growing them. And I definitely loved them. They kind of, they worked really well with cafe allays, the colouring. And now I'm on this mission to grow more this year now that I have more space again. Beautiful. Absolutely. And then the North American um prairie perennials that I loved are echinacea. I found that the species echinacea, the classic one with the orange cone and the purple petals, is the tallest and um longest lasting. But there is a really lovely one that's called white petals, called white swan, which is just divine and it's so helpful. um
00:18:34
Speaker
in bouquets and if you get to the echinacea once the petals have started to um dehydrate you can pluck those off and then you've got the lovely orange cones um that can go in. I love sea holly and I love echinops as well and it's so useful isn't it to get some blue tones into arrangements I often find that I'm looking for blue um and for me the sea holly flowers first I grow a blue one and then also a white one called Miss Wilmot's Ghost, which is wonderful. A dusk on the flower farm, it just kind of glows. I guess that's where the name came from. And then Echinops, which are more the golf ball, round, bigger, globe flowers. For me, they flower a month or so later. Okay, beautiful. I'm just picturing such a magical space that you must have. And it's all in bloom right now, right?
00:19:32
Speaker
It's in bloom all year round because we don't really get hard frost. I have flowers 12 months of the year, um which is a joy. And I can grow most things. is I'm very lucky.
Challenges of Rural Australian Flower Farming
00:19:44
Speaker
The only thing I can't grow is peonies because we don't have enough days of frost. um But pretty much everything else, um we can grow 12 months of the year. That's incredible. And so NBS says I'm looking outside and seeing snow on the ground and nothing but darkness.
00:20:01
Speaker
I know, but there are lots of Australian flower farmers who choose to not grow for a season. So if you're in a warmer place, let's say you're in California or somewhere, you might choose to skip summer um because it might just be that you decide that to keep flowers um looking great in the heat with water challenges that you can skip that. And that's where dried flowers come in for your season, your off-season, whether that's summer in a hot place or winter in a cold place. um I love ah ah box a stashed box of dried flower bits that can be pulled out for those times of year.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yes, I've got a bouquet of dried flowers to the side of me here. It's the only color that I can get this time of year. So you mentioned that you're in a small town and it's a long ways away to the next big town. Who is your client base for your flower farm?
00:20:56
Speaker
So I have realized that every flower farm has its unique set of opportunities and challenges when it comes to finding um people to take the flowers. And I've realized that I could only um persuade my neighbors to take so many flowers as any week in the year. There's just a very tiny market. So yes, I do do um market bunches, so happy birthday bunches, you know new babies. ah We are by the sea, so there's lots of weddings that happen. So I'm doing 22 weddings this year. So people come to the area as a destination because it's very beautiful.
00:21:39
Speaker
um I grow and dry flowers, so I'll ship around the country my dried flowers, equally daily attubers, Italian renunculus, corns, seeds that I've sown, ah rooted heirloom, chrysanthemum cuttings. So I use the postal service to um distribute things. And so a lot of my customers are other gardeners, other people wanting to grow cut flowers.
00:22:07
Speaker
um I started off by having um lots of people coming to workshops on the flower farm but then I think maybe the people who are local to me that would like to do a workshop have done a workshop and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book so I could share this knowledge much more widely.
00:22:26
Speaker
I often travel with my flowers to um the cities, although increasingly I'm much keener to try and convince local flower farms to those places to grow rather than for me to drive my flowers because that doesn't really make sense to me for a local flower farm movement.
January's Busy Wedding Season
00:22:46
Speaker
and increasingly doing bits and pieces online. So do you see, i'm I'm doing lots of different things at different times of the year. And so by doing all these different things, I'm busy every month of the year, but there's a different focus all the time.
00:23:02
Speaker
So right now it's January. What's your focus for this month? So January, I know it it must feel very strange when you're in the middle of a snowstorm, but I'm at 32 degrees Celsius, which is sort of in the nineties Fahrenheit. Oh my goodness. So very different.
00:23:20
Speaker
I know, it's gorgeous. um So our dahlias are starting to flower. We've gone beyond the longest day of the year and so dahlias are in peak. It's wedding season now. I'm doing weddings every weekend. um We've got people asking to come and walk around the flower farm for you picks.
00:23:43
Speaker
um It's tourist season in the local area so there's a lot more people around than normal. I'm sowing my last succession of zinnia seeds. I'm cutting paper daisies and status and um sea holly to dry because it's nice and hot and dry and things dry very quickly.
00:24:05
Speaker
Oh, I'm keeping up the watering. That's a big battle. And then of course, um step trying to stay on top of the weeds. So we are we are high summer. Wow. You sound very busy. I feel so honored that you're joining me and carving out time. And you're scheduled to join us on the podcast. and So thank you. um You have three acres. That's a lot of flowers. Do you do this all by yourself or do you have a team?
00:24:34
Speaker
So I used to have a retail shop in the local seaside town um and I closed that about six months ago. So at that point, yes, I did have a team. But I realised that what filled my cup and brought me most joy was the growing of the flowers and I had got to a point where I was doing everything but growing flowers which felt counterintuitive to me because it's um it's what makes me happy. um And so I've pulled back a little bit um and with the book coming out as well that um needed a little bit of um focus
00:25:15
Speaker
I get help when there's big seasonal jobs. So digging dahlias, we have thousands and thousands of dahlias in the ground. I can't do it on my own. My back would not thank me. um And um then um also when the roses need to be pruned, um people will come in to help me do that. um So there's big seasonal, tough jobs. I get help. But other than that, I'm trying to do it myself.
00:25:40
Speaker
I do work very hard and and let's see how long it lasts, but at the moment it's just me.
Global Experiences Fueling Gardening Passion
00:25:48
Speaker
Does your husband work on the farm also?
00:25:51
Speaker
No, he runs the sheep and... Okay. for business Gotcha. But it's quite nice because um because we're in the same location. I mean, the farm is big, um but sometimes he'll be moving a mob of sheep past the flowers and I can wave to him in the tractor and um he says that he can smell the roses when he's moving the sheep. And I um like to say to him that he's got the best end of the bargain because I can smell his sheep, but probably not my the roses anymore and he only smells the roses and not the sheep. That's funny. I love that you guys have found a way to make it work where you've lived all over the world, which I'm sure has given you so many experiences. Has that contributed to your desire to write this book? or Let's talk about your book a little bit. How did this book come to be? Sure.
00:26:41
Speaker
um so the The fact of growing in four different climates meant that I needed to take my education from the Royal Horticultural Society, my foundation in how to grow flowers, and adapt it to the different ah regions and climates that I was growing in. And in doing that time after time, just like people who learn multiple languages and then realize that there's a little key that unlocks all shortcuts,
00:27:11
Speaker
ways of learning how to grow in different conditions. I realised that um once you looked for certain factors in how to grow flowers, how to start seeds, how to select plants that would grow in your place, you could quite easily find ways of doing things that met your individual conditions i mean I'm sure you're finding in your new um ah home and new flower farm that it will be different growing conditions to the place you um grew in last time. And I think even when we only move a couple of miles away, um it can be very different.
00:27:47
Speaker
um so um In adjusting my approaches um to growing, I wanted to reflect that through the book and you'll find in the book that I'll say if you live in a hot climate, this is you maybe a way of doing it, but if you're in a cool if you have cooler conditions, this is an alternative approach or if this plant doesn't work for you, grow me instead, here's an alternative that gives you a similar shaped flower at a different time of year. So those are some of the ideas we wanted to show. but um And I also wanted to share a little bit of the Australian experience um with growers in the Northern Hemisphere who may be experiencing more unpredicable unpredictable conditions.
00:28:30
Speaker
So you it's different for everybody, right? And it's different from one season to the next, but maybe more storms, more deluges, more rain, warmer conditions, drier conditions. I think what I'm feeling that we as gardeners around the world are experiencing is more unpredictability. And Australians have lived with unpredictability forever. um it's the It's the country of fire and s flood, and one we're currently in drought.
00:28:58
Speaker
ah Whereas a year ago, we had more water than we knew um what to deal with. And so it's those sorts of learnings that I hope comes through the book. Oh, that's exciting. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. um I love how you mentioned just even going a few miles away because my last farm, I had this beautiful well draining soil and I'm really glad that we acquired our land in September, which was the end of the season where I couldn't plant anything. And I'm being forced to watch it this winter because other than the very top part of our land, we have 20 acres that slopes over 80 feet. So it's a pretty,
00:29:37
Speaker
light sloping field, but the amount of water that is standing, it's like walking through a pond in areas. and so It's going to be totally different for me and I'm realizing I just received a whole bunch of native perennial prairie seeds that I'm going to be planting that can handle those kind of conditions on the lower part of the land. But where I had planned to originally put my rose garden has six inches of standing water and I'm thinking, well, roses won't live there.
00:30:07
Speaker
No, and isn't that a blessing that you've been able to observe it? And also with your irrigation, if you're running drip irrigation going down the slope, you might need to traverse that slope rather than going down it so you don't get more of that puddling. Oh, that's a good point. You'll be looking at drainage as well, won't you?
00:30:27
Speaker
Yes, all kinds of new things to consider. It's so exciting having a new piece of land and learning its personality and what does well there. And the old adage of right plant, right place is so, so true. And I don't know about you, but I'm always in a rush to get plants in the ground and I'll go to a garden center and see something beautiful and just really need to have it or see somebody ah talking about it or hear somebody talking about it but um it's really good to just take that pause and to look at what conditions the plant really likes because a happy healthy plant will give you the best cut flowers so it's worth doing that pause.
00:31:08
Speaker
wow That's great advice. I love that. I love that you said looking at the conditions they need to grow too, because it's so easy to say see that flower. like If I look at your Instagram page, I go, oh my goodness, look at what you're growing, but those might not grow well in my zone for certain things. However, I think everything you've said are things that we grow here too. I always love that. that like We can be halfway around the world from someone, and we're growing such similar crops. I mean, you have the dahlias, you have the foxglove, echinops, echinacea, all of these plants, it seems like regardless of where you go, are common local flowers that you can find from a farmer.
00:31:51
Speaker
that's so true but what I love looking at around the world is how flower fashion is changing and yeah so what's fashionable in one part of the world is maybe maybe hasn't caught on yet somewhere else or is never going to be fashionable there. I really noticed coming to Australia ah where the light is so bright the UV is so really yeah blingy almost and so bright colors work really really well here whereas in England those lovely pastel-y blues and pinks and purples can seem really washed out by the light hair. um So I think what looks good in different places can change as well. um I've just planted some carnations. And when I say carnations, people almost... think, oh, I'm not so sure about that. But they're such great um heat and drought tolerant plants. And so I'm going to see if my customers will take them. lot I've just planted a few beds, not nothing nothing major. So we'll see if it
Carnation Resurgence
00:32:50
Speaker
works. But that's my I'm always trying something new. I'm always on a search for something new and exciting to add to that toolkit of flowers that we all know and love, you know the staples. um Yes, that we know are such great cup flowers, easy to grow, easy to get great varieties. But it's fun to, I don't know, mix it up each season, listen to do something and fresh and new.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yes. Well, I actually read trying to think if it was, I want to say it was on Martha Stewart. It maybe was Better Homes and Garden. One of the major outlets here in the US was saying that carnations were going to be one of the biggest flowers of the year. And you always know that those trends kind of take a few years to catch on, but it made me think maybe I should have had some. And now you're mentioning the carnations.
00:33:36
Speaker
So they're hard to get around here. Are they? I buy my um my plants in um as seedlings, um sort of as you little plant starts and big flats of 280 at the time. And I do that also with lysianthus because they're notoriously difficult to grow from seed, aren't they? What I found when I first started growing lysianthus is I really didn't like them. So for me, they were grocery store flowers. they were keep an uninspiring and long lasting and they just didn't fill me with joy. But then I saw some of the varieties that were available um from the cut flower growers um and I've fallen in love and I've got ones that look like Chianese growing in the flower farm at the moment. They're so ruffled and full, they're fully double. And I've got another really beautiful dusky pink with this little stem chocolate center. And I don't know, sometimes you can discount a flower by the the most common version of itself, whereas there's sometimes fun cultivars we can find. Yes, that's so true. Going back to your book, what else can we find in your book?
00:34:53
Speaker
So the book is halfway between a beautiful coffee table book where you can look at lots of beautiful photography. We had a very clever photography work with us um and then it's a how-to and it's called Secrets from the Flower Farm because the essence or the secrets, the tips and tricks for each plant are different. It may be that we're considering the groups of snapdragons or the groups of lysianthus, so you sow the right seed um for the right flowering period. It might be that we talk about how to prune your roses in a way that gives the longest possible stems for cutting. um It might be how we're talking about
00:35:43
Speaker
growing heirloom chrysanthemums each year from cuttings rather than relying on the parent plants but the secrets to great cut flowers for each plant are different and they're the things that I've acquired over six years of growing flowers full-time and a decade before that of learning about horticulture um that just start to form that way of doing things.
Growing Secrets for Diverse Climates
00:36:09
Speaker
And I wanted to find a way of unpacking it that was a bit different to your classic a cut flower books so that I could share those with um with people. Oh, it sounds lovely. So do you go
00:36:22
Speaker
plant by plant, so like there's a section on snapdragons, there's a section on roses, is that how it's broken down? Yeah, so we start by talking about right plant, right place, and all those things that we were talking about earlier about making sure that what you're growing matches your conditions. Then we go by season, so there's sections, and then we'll talk about the focal filler and foliage plants that are in bloom for that season. And towards the end there's two other sections, one on Growing ah flowers for drying so dry flowers and then also the australian and south african native plants which deserve their own um their own section um i've seen lots of um australian and south african natives appearing in people's gardens in the uk
00:37:10
Speaker
And so I think this is the beginning of a new trend for Northern Hemisphere gardeners. um Growers or um ah garden centers in the Northern Hemisphere increasingly are stocking ah these plants. And the proteas, the banksias have such amazing flower shapes. They'll last three, four weeks in the vase. um And so it's really worth seeing if anything can be a match to your conditions.
00:37:35
Speaker
Interesting. Can you give us a little hint at a couple of those flowers? Or is that what you were just saying? like Yeah, Protea. So the Protea is um a big family of flowers. ah Much loved are the King Protea, which um have flowers as big as a side plate, um really big flowers. um And they're a soft pink. um You can also get white and a raspberry colored one, but the soft pink is um strongest. They actually become um large shrubs or small trees. um Then there are a wide range of other Protea flowers. um
00:38:12
Speaker
and there's lots of different cultivars within that Banksias. So the proteas come from South Africa. The Banksias come from um Australia and they flower in summer whereas the proteas flower for us in winter. So it's nice to have that spread of the seasons. um And they are more sort of bottle brush shaped flowers, um similarly long lasting. And there's very many different um ah varieties of those. um They come a lot in the sort of yellows and whites and greens, sort of more earthy tones, whereas the Proteus are more in the pinks and reds. There's some other fun flowers called leucospermums or pincushion flowers, and these are round globe flowers. They almost look there like they've got nylon threads. Some people say they look a bit like sea urchins.
00:39:02
Speaker
um And those are in yellows and corals and orange colors. So flowers, unlike anything else that exists in the Northern Hemisphere, they're just delightful. Leucodendrons, they are more like colorful foliage plants, but you get rich reds and stripey colors and bright yellows and greens. And so they're really a really good way of elevating the foliage in an arrangement.
00:39:28
Speaker
I love that. I'm really hoping personally that we have more, you mentioned the difference of like the pastels and the brights. And it seems like at least in this area, I've seen a lot of pastels and the wedding colors, but the bright colors just seem so happy and cheerful that I'd love to see more of those, especially what you're describing, um those bright, cheerful colors. It would be just so fun to have more of that. And I think we're starting to see a trend. I'm seeing more corals and oranges creeping in and salmon into this next year.
00:39:58
Speaker
Absolutely. I totally agree with you. There was a couple of years, particularly when the wedding flowers were white roses. And it was a long summer when I was just doing white roses all season. I think there were many florists. But this year I'm noticing lots of, I call them bright sherverts.
00:40:15
Speaker
They're really clear, bright colours with a little pop of baby blue, maybe a little bit of Delphinium in there, um and they're really happy.
Trend Shift in Wedding Colors
00:40:23
Speaker
ah But certainly my 2026 brides are really going towards those raspberries and corals, like you say, and really quite brave colours for weddings. um And and it's a nice um it's a nice uplift on the autumn tones as well, to have that fresh spin on the sunset colours.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yes, I totally agree. So I think that you have similar trending colors as we do here. It's interesting. I don't know if you guys have the Pantone colors of the year that they do in the US s because they came out just recently. I think it's like mocha mousse. I might be saying the color wrong, but it's kind of a brownish color. That's the color of the year. And I was thinking like, are we going to have that color this year? But it's kind of that delay in the trends. I lived in Europe.
00:41:08
Speaker
long time ago back in 2005. I lived in Italy and when I was, it was my senior year of college and, or I guess it was 2004 sometime back then. I can't keep track of the math anymore. Early 2000s. I remember like there were all these leather jackets, these leather boots, and I thought I was so cool coming home with all of this trendy clothing and I come back and no one's wearing any of this.
00:41:33
Speaker
And I got rid of everything. And then a few years later, those trends started coming. But it seems like what you see in the magazines and stuff often takes time to catch on. And I feel like flowers are very similar. It's so true. And there's such trends with flowers. And flowers follow fashion as well. and so often when i Because um when we're growing, when we're buying seed, of course,
00:42:00
Speaker
you need to think about what's going to be on trend and desirable 12 months out. yeah I'm always looking to the catwalks. I look to home design. um I do look to America to say see, is there something different happening here? Is there something different happening in Europe?
00:42:16
Speaker
um what might be the next trend. um It's difficult with things like roses and that's where lots of our mocha and you know coffee tones come from with soul sister roses and coca loca and other flowers like that um but it's hard to with the perennials to be able to change too often Yes. And sometimes I feel quite a lot of pressure, I must say, to try and get it right. And what happens if I get it wrong? And so you can grow a little bit of everything or you can grow what you love,
Flowers for Personal Joy vs. Trends
00:42:48
Speaker
can't you? And then and say, well, if I'm growing it and it makes me happy, then fingers crossed whatever the fashion, I'm still going to want to see that in my garden. And I think it's it's a little bit of a balance between not being a slave to fashion and so but having an eye on it at the same time.
00:43:02
Speaker
I love that. One of my words this year is joy. And so I keep reminding myself, grow what brings you joy, which is very similar to that grow what you love saying as well. So I think that's so important that it those trends are going to come and grow, but especially with those perennials you want to love because it's going to take two or three years for them to get established once you plant them. And so the trends may come and go.
00:43:24
Speaker
for sure. And there's always colours that are going to be desirable. Everybody's going to want a soft pink, a soft peach, a white. So then yeah we can we can have that foundation colours and then maybe that's then where the annuals come in that you can swap out that fast fashion because an annual you can grow it in 90 to 110 days as a year or something. And that can be something that you're very, I call it fast fashion. You're fast flowers equaling your fast fashion.
00:43:52
Speaker
Speaking of the fast fashion and zinnias, are you guys getting some of the amazing zinnias that we've been having here? We are. We are. There are florets, zinnias, flowering of my flower palm at the moment. And everybody um is sort of seeing their first few flowers and putting putting pictures up. It's quite exciting. That's awesome. Erin's varieties were so incredible. I can't wait to see what else comes from her breeding. And the other people, there's a small handful of people breeding the zinnias right now. So it's really exciting to see more
00:44:24
Speaker
farmer florist type colors coming out of them instead of the bright reds and purples that are traditionally what you see growing in a backyard garden. Well sure, I think Erin and Flora are the only company that's exported to Australia so far. Fingers crossed guys if you want to export here. So there's a market, there's lots of Australian demand for different colours. We have a tighter range of flower varieties that are available in ah the Northern Hemisphere because our biosecurity ah rules are so strong. So it's difficult for companies to import sometimes.
00:45:01
Speaker
ah Yes, I know I sometimes have people asking, like do you ship your dahlias outside of the US? Being a small farmer, you can only do so much. It's so expensive to try and get those import and export permits. I was even looking at an import permit. I saw some seeds over in the UK that I wanted, and I was like, it's quite the process to get flowers.
00:45:22
Speaker
It has really changed in recent years. So when I first started, I could import from the UK easily Chilton Seeds is one of my big favorite um yeah seed suppliers. um And that was possible, but um it's harder, much, much harder now. um But it also there's ah There's a silver lining to every cloud, and it means that each country has its own set of dahlias. So there's a couple of exceptions like Cafe au Lait, maybe Cornell, Ivernessy, some of those real old classics, which we share. Australia has its own totally different set of dahlias, so we don't grow what you grow. But I quite like looking at the different colours and varieties, so it means that we have our own little Australian family of dahlias, and you have your US ones.
00:46:10
Speaker
Well, I have to ask about the dahlias. Do you guys have the same kind of dahlia wars that we're having in the US where everyone wants dahlias right now? Absolutely. It's manic. ah we um the You'll be going into your sales in January. Some have already started, yes.
00:46:27
Speaker
is Oh my goodness, that the the mania is real. And I keep thinking each year, is it going to slow down? Is it going to die off? But no, I think there's wonderfully so many more people growing their own flowers that um the daily wars just just continue. um It is crazy. We put our sail up. We have the thousands of people kind of waiting on our sites. The best varieties or the most desirable ones in the most desirable colours go in seconds. and yeah you need you need If you're selling data to your business, you need a really good, strong um website platform to be able to go through that demand. Totally. How many varieties do you grow?
Dahlia Varieties and the Mystery Patch
00:47:11
Speaker
Oh, goodness. I know we're planting about seven and a half thousand plants this year. Wow. And I would have to guess the varieties. We're probably in the of four, five hundred varieties.
00:47:25
Speaker
That's incredible. It's a lot. It's a lot. Wow. You need to make sure that you have that UV stable Sharpie. that Because one year I wrote on a big batch um and um with the Australian UV lights, I came at the end of the season and all the um or the ink had dried off so that then became my mystery mystery patch. now goes to hospitals and other charities but no I've actually developed ah a system now where I have a label printer and it prints the labels so I can put those onto the stakes. so and all That's a lovely gesture of giving them away.
00:48:03
Speaker
because you But it's so fun, isn't it, seeing those first flowers at the beginning of the season. Or even though the dailies flower for so long, it's so sad when they stop flowering. And yeah then when they start flowering again, I don't know about you, but I've missed them so much. I sort of get down to the flower farm every day to see what's what's new and what's appeared and especially new varieties when I'm going for the first time. It's so exciting. Absolutely. Well, especially for us after such a long winter,
00:48:33
Speaker
when we have to check on them and baby them in our storage and wash and divide them. It's like, okay, this was worth it. And it's almost like having a child. You're like, I'm never doing this again. And then you see, and you're like, this was worth it. This is this is why I do it. And you forget about all the hard work that goes into caring for the Dallias.
00:48:53
Speaker
Because it is a 12-month process. There's something to do pretty much every month of the year, even if they're in storage ah out of the frost and you're just checking on them, you've got to monitor the moisture levels in that packing box, haven't you? Absolutely. What about growing from seeds? Are you growing any dahlias from seed?
00:49:10
Speaker
We're growing lots from seed. We grow a lot from seed because they volunteer and they just pop up in a rose bed or you know in various places around the farm because we've got so many and for so many years now we've had them. There are dahlias absolutely everywhere. um I'm a little bit of a softie and I'm not very good at the culling process. I don't like to pull them up because I'll see one that's clearly no good but it's covered in bees and I just don't have the heart to pull them. I do need to get stronger at that.
00:49:39
Speaker
um But then, of course, we grow lots that we're saving from seeds. And because we grow lots in big blocks, I found that cafe au lait is a really great seed parent. um And so we'll plant the various blocks of cafe au lait next to different varieties. So we'll plant them next to one called bracken palomino, which is a really great milky apricot. and We have that one here. Yeah.
00:50:04
Speaker
And they mix really well. And um then we'll plant cafe au lait maybe next to something that's sort of a really dark purple to see. I mean, I would love a dark purple cafe au lait or something. I don't know. So we kind of play around with the varieties and then we have our seed, yeah. So it sounds like you're very strategic with some of your breeding projects. ah Strategic and then totally chaotic at the same time. it's I love it. You can have a little bit of both.
00:50:31
Speaker
It's fun, right? Oh, absolutely. That's one of the words. um Well, one of my last guests, Lori from Three Acre Farms in Michigan, she said her word of the year is and, and I've been thinking about that a lot lately that you can have structure here and you can have fun here and just that mix of play and everything. I think about plants that self seed around the flower farm a bit like that, that I've got a big block of seed a few or chamomile flowers that are growing in a bed, but if it pops up in the middle of a, well probably not in the middle of a pathway, but somewhere else that's unexpected and it looks really great and
00:51:12
Speaker
It shows me a color combination I haven't thought of. It stays. It's fun. um just And so I like that as well. I can't be too ordered. No. it It's such a tough job sometimes that just having that little element of fun or the surprise makes it a little bit lighter the days.
00:51:33
Speaker
So speaking of ands and having some fun, what are some fun things that you do with your flowers? Oh goodness, and we managed to do a little bit of this and capture it in the book as well. I think one of the best things to do with dead heads, so flowers that are still looking beautiful but maybe the backs of the dahlias have started to dehydrate a little bit or There's too much of a wiggle in that stem for you to use it. And I like to do a little bit of flower bombing. So it might be that we, in the most simple level, take big bowls of water or um ah troughs of water, the animal troughs. and float daily ahead in them in a kind of an ombre effect. That's quite fun. Or we have some old stone buildings. um They were old um homesteads, I guess, um a stone cottage in the old orchard. And for the book, I hung chicken wire in the windows and the doors and threaded the flowers into that chicken wire. So it looked like the building was full of flowers and they were coming, flowing out the windows and out the doors. amazing. And we did that with dahlias because we had so many dahlias and it was such fun. And also with a training amaranthus in Seleucia. In that building as well, um there's old windows. And I like to
00:53:01
Speaker
create a window box. There's no box, it's just stems um um held upright in the window. And we did that for each season. um And then also um it's just quite fun. I love the idea of flowers in a window. I think it it frames the flowers really beautifully.
00:53:19
Speaker
And then, oh yes, my favourite though um was in rose season, which in Australia is earlier summer. And there's these old um abandoned farm vehicles in a beautiful piece of, a beautiful paddock which has lots of eucalyptus trees. And um these, and the Australians call them euts. I don't know if they use that word in America as well.
00:53:45
Speaker
They're called mutes, but they're basically flatbed um small um trucks. and And I filled the tray of the ute with flowers and had them coming through the windows. But there was also bracken fern growing through um the beds of the truck because they'd been there for decades. oh as well. So it was almost this sort of place that time forgot to create something sort of otherworldly um which was quite nice. And then the final one that spring that comes to memory is there's a watering hole. So when my husband's um family first arrived on this piece of land, they dug a watering hole. So the water table in this part of Australia is very high. So they could dig in, um cracking through the rock with pitchforks. So I don't think, yeah with pickaxes, but I don't think it was easy going. But even still, they managed to um cut away into the ground and the rock so that there was an area where the animals could drink and they could get water from.
00:54:46
Speaker
and because there were certainly no pumps or anything mechanised or to get water otherwise. And because of the hole going into the ground, it's the last place that um is still green in the middle of Australian summer where all the grasses are biscuit and parched and dried off around. So we took dahlias and sunflowers and other North American prairie plants and to this watering hole and greened it up a little bit um to to do another flower install. So those are just some of the ways that I like to play with the flowers. And there's sometimes doesn't need to be a reason. It can be just because um and just for fun. And certainly, if you're growing an abundance of flowers, it's quite fun to do something with those flowers that wouldn't otherwise have a place in in your home.
Whimsy in Flower Installations
00:55:39
Speaker
I love that you added a little bit of whimsy to the flowers or to the spaces. You you created some whimsy in the spaces, which is a word that I'm trying to use this year as well as, as I know this is going to be a really hard year for us as we are literally starting from scratch again. I'm like, how do we make this fun? How do we make add an element of whimsy? And I love those ideas. And we need to continue playing as adults. We play as children, but we need to play as adults as well. I think it's really important.
00:56:09
Speaker
Absolutely. Oh, I love those ideas. So some of those pictures will be in your book of these different installations. Those installations are all in the book. but I can't wait to see them. Those sound amazing. And speaking of having some time for play and fun, travel, it sounds like, was part of your life. Before starting the flower farm, you've lived all over the world. Do you have any plans to come back to the US?
00:56:35
Speaker
I'm so excited because I've really missed the US and I haven't been back since we left Connecticut.
US Book Tour and Flower Farmer Connections
00:56:42
Speaker
ah So I'm coming back in May to talk about the book and to catch up with some of my flower farmer friends who I've met remotely um but never in person and to be inspired by people growing flowers.
00:57:00
Speaker
yeah around the world. And I think it's really nice to see how people are doing things in different places. So I'm really looking forward to catching up with my Connecticut gardening friends and to to travel around for states a little bit talking about and about secrets from the flower farm. Oh, that's so exciting. Do you have a tour lined up or what's your plan? Not yet, but I will. And I'll be putting that on my social media and my website as soon as that's firmed up.
00:57:27
Speaker
OK, so if we want to know about your tour schedule, we better follow you online then. Please do. I love that. um My Instagram is StarlingFlowers, underscore. So Starling like the birds. um And then my website is StarlingFlowers dot.com.au. So don't forget the AU. That means it's the Australian website.
00:57:49
Speaker
Perfect. I'll add links to both of those on our show notes for today. We've talked about so much today. It's been so fun. I have so loved getting to chat with you today. You are just a wealth of knowledge and your story is so amazing and inspiring from having lived all over the world and taking what you've learned and putting it into this book.
Gardening Advice for Personal Circumstances
00:58:12
Speaker
that's soon going to be out here in the US, but Secrets from the Flower Farm. I'm so excited to get my hands on a copy of the book. Is there anything we haven't touched on today or any advice that you would like to share with our listeners before we say goodbye?
00:58:29
Speaker
We've talked a lot about growing what makes you happy and I think that's so important yes but what I also hear is this on this and I think it it changes from season to season and year to year is should you focus on a few crops or a few flowers and master that or should you do everything and trial it and then work out And I think you need to just do you. And what I mean by that is do what works for your energy levels and the time you can um give to your flowers and your personality. I don't think there needs to be a a rule for how you approach your flower journey. Everybody's circumstances are different. And I think you can just give yourself a little bit of grace and just
00:59:18
Speaker
do what feels right for you in your circumstances. And if you plant everything and feel it's too much and need to roll back, then you do that. If you start small and then feel that you you have fear of missing out because you you didn't plant your zinnias and everybody else has them, for example,
00:59:35
Speaker
then you plant zinnias next time you can plant them. um And I think just being kind to yourself and not comparing and knowing that everybody else has a different way of growing and different set of circumstances is what I think is the best way because we're all so, so different, aren't we? And our circumstances are so different.
00:59:55
Speaker
I love that so much. Just do you. That's such a great thought or reminder or affirmation as we're going into this new year of 2025 is grow what you love and what's true to you because there's so many opinions out there and everyone's going to tell you something different. So if you just grow what you love and do you, that's amazing advice. Thank you so much, Rebecca.
01:00:22
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me on. It's been such fun talking to you. It's been an absolute delight, and I hope that I'll get to meet you when you're here in the US. That would be so fun. Let's do that. Yes. All right. Well, thanks so much. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
01:00:38
Speaker
Thank you Flower Friends for joining us on another episode of the Backyard Bouquet. I hope you've enjoyed the inspiring stories and valuable gardening insights we've shared today. Whether you're cultivating your own backyard blooms or supporting your local flower farmer, you're contributing to the local flower movement, and we're so happy to have you growing with us.
01:00:59
Speaker
If you'd like to stay connected and continue this blossoming journey with local flowers, don't forget to subscribe to the Backyard Bouquet podcast. I'd be so grateful if you would take a moment to leave us a review of this episode. And finally, please share this episode with your garden friends. Until next time, keep growing, keep blooming, and remember that every bouquet starts right here in the backyard.