Flower power: making the most of Irish flowers

Bunches of flowers in your local supermarket are convenient, they’re pretty, and often a colourful mix of popular grows. But most will have been imported on to Irish shores – and as a famously green country, it won’t surprise you that we have a rainbow of homegrown flowers of our own. Irish Flower Week, which runs from 5 to 11 July, will celebrate exactly that!

Organised by the Flower Farmers of Ireland, an association of growers who sell everything from fresh spring bouquets to winter wreaths, the week aims to raise awareness about homegrowing heroes.

Ali Franks, owner of Clonakenny Flower Farm in Co Tipperary, started selling flowers at her gate during lockdown, but now she grows, picks and provides stunning flowers for weddings. For Ali, it was a natural progression born from a family history.

“I had always wanted to set up a business and grew up surrounded by gardens. Both my mam and granny were keen gardeners and my mam worked part-time as a florist when we were kids,” she explains.

As with many people, lockdown proved to be a time of transformation for Ali, which coincided with the birth of her third child. She was due to return to her work as a chef after her maternity leave, but having taken a business course in the interim, she wanted to test if there was a market for her style of floristry.

Family time

“I wanted to open my own business where I could spend time with my kids while also expressing myself creativity. I wanted to be able to manage my own time around my family life while also doing something that makes me happy and also brings in an income,” she explains.

Now, she specialises in sustainable and seasonal flowers for events, subscriptions, or local delivery from her farm in Roscrea.

Ali’s farm consists of approximately one acre of flowers grown in wild flower meadows and raised beds, as well as five polytunnels for the more delicate flowers.

One of the aims of Irish Flower Week is to highlight all that is good about Irish flowers, and one such benefit is the proximity that allows for bespoke delivery. And buying local means supporting a community and ensuring small businesses can do what they do.

Ali “had to start from scratch”.

“It was the bouquets that I was selling at the gate that gave me the opportunity to then do a local wedding and things took off from there,” she explains. “So if the local support hadn’t been there initially, we wouldn’t have been able to get it up off the ground.”

Ali’s flowers are chemical-free and have all the beauty with none of the uniformity, giving them a unique quality you just can’t manufacture. “You won’t ever get 20 flowers of the same variety that look the same,” she says.

In a recent press release, the Flower Farmers of Ireland association reported that the number of growers registered with the organisation has increased by 20% within the last 12 months, citing “a growing trend for Irish consumers to seek locally grown flowers and foliage for special occasions” as the cause.

And what occasion could be more special than a wedding? Matrimony forms one of the main focuses of Ali’s flower business, regularly working closely with dreamy Tipperary venue Cloughjordan House, where she used to be a chef.

Growing flowers and preparing them for weddings is a time-consuming job, and is something Ali says is the hardest part.

“We grow seed and bulb here. So we propagate all our seeds on site and we’re literally taking them from seed to flower and then to selling for weddings or bouquets.”

But time spent at work also means time spent outdoors, something she considers a personal highlight.

“My favorite thing is being able to just open the door and go outside and pick buckets of flowers and have the dogs with me and the cats. And if the kids are home from school, they’re outside as well.”

Grow together

The Flower Farmers of Ireland is a place for growers around the country to come together, forming a community aspect to what can be a lonely business. For Ali, being part of a larger group has been a “Godsend”, having also worked closely with rural startup support, ACORNS.

“I had a mentor and I was part of a group of women from rural Ireland who were all trying to set up their own businesses and that was brilliant,” she says.

The programme is supported by the Department of Agriculture, and helps to accelerate small local business.

To celebrate Irish Flower Week, local growers are running events with the theme of ‘locally grown’. Keep an eye on the association’s Instagram (@flowerfarmersireland) and to find your local Flower Farmers of Ireland member, see flowerfarmersofireland.ie/. This summer, as the saying goes, take time to smell the flowers, and buy them locally too.