It's time for you
Join our Garden Path: Seed to Vase course
Field Gate Flowers have been flower farmers for over ten years. We are passionate about helping people to have their own cutting patches and hope you will join us on your journey.
You need a gift for a friend, a splash of colour and sunshine for your home, a pick-me-up for someone special, or a little addition to your dinner table. Of course, flowers are just the thing!
So, you dash to the local supermarket only to find:
- An astounding lack of sweet peas, larkspur, cornflowers and British natural blooms
- Hum-drum arrangements, boring bouquets, and strange colour combinations
- You can’t smell the flowers over the scent of the bakery
- None of the fragrance you remember flowers having when you were a child
You could go to the florist instead, but that’s so expensive and you know the blooms have travelled miles!
The only other resort is garage flowers. Let’s not even go there!
90% of flowers in Britain are imported! You may think your flowers were grown in Holland. Actually, the journey is much longer!
Most imported varieties are grown in Ethiopia and Kenya, some from Columbia. These scentless hybrid blooms are treated with pesticides, dipped in preservatives, then flown to Holland for cold storage. Finally, the flowers are shipped to Britain.
Join my new course
The Garden Path: a collective journey from seed to vase
to enjoy:
- Starter packs of classic English flower seeds
- Advice on what to buy (and what you can skip) to maximise your investment
- Learning (over 8 months) everything you need to do for growing your own beautiful, fragrant blooms, including how to:
- preparing and designing your patch
- grow in a greenhouse, polytunnel, cold frame, or windowsill
- check the pH of the soil and work with the soil you have
- transplant seedlings into the ground as well as direct seed planting
- cutting and conditioning the flowers
- arrange the flowers (we really do take you from seed to vase!)
- Plain-language explanations to take you to the next level of your cut flower journey
- Access to our masterclasses on peonies, roses, sweetpeas and more
- An expert team of horticulturalists and florists to follow step-by-step (we do, you do)
- Newfound confidence in your floral abilities
- Choices on how to access the information to best suit the way you learn
- Loads of online support
- A lively, engaged, and exclusive community of other budding cut flower growers (even after the course)
- Skills you can enjoy for the rest of your life!
Some words from our 2021 students
I've told you enough to pique your interest and you're still reading. Why?
- We’ll start together on the 28th February.
- Join up sooner so we can get your seeds in the post (students outside the UK, please see the question below).
- You’ll get access to the exclusive Facebook community as soon as you join! It's the perfect place to:
- Ask your questions
- Make connections with other cut flower growers
- Find resources and recommendations for tools and suppliers
- Get excited for our course to start
- The course wraps up on 31st October.
- You’ll keep access to the Facebook community after the course ends.
- Best of all, the skills you grow here will last a lifetime!
We will cover the following in detail;
- Setting up your space - designing and preparing your patch; weeding and clearing, compost, looking at your soil, the aspect of the site.
- Growing from seed - how to get the best from your greenhouse, cold frame, or polytunnel.
- How to grow annuals, biennials, short-lived and long-lived perennials
- Bulb masterclass
- Foliage masterclass
- All about irrigation - how to water efficiently
- Looking after your blooms - support, dead-heading, disbudding, and “pinching out”
- How to deal with and prevent pests and diseases.
- Perennials masterclass, focus on roses, dahlias and peonies.
- Increasing your plant stock; propagating new plants from cuttings and by division
- Cutting and conditioning blooms
- Making gift bouquets and vase arrangements
We love to welcome students from all over the world - it is fascinating to see how your cutting patch develops slightly differently from those in the UK. Our live sessions are generally scheduled at 8pm GMT/12noon PST/9pm CET.
We would only mention that some of the techniques and varieties we suggest might not be suitable if your climate is very different to ours here in the UK. Sadly, due to bio-restrictions, we are not able to send the seed packs outside England, Scotland and Wales, but you will still receive the wonderful e-book that accompanies them. Finally, due to restrictions on our payment software, we are only able to take payments in GBP. The full fee of £397 is approximately $530 USD or €470 EUR at the time of writing. Please check with your bank to confirm the current exchange rate they are using and whether they will apply any fees to your transaction.
With this tier, you get full access to the course (with the seedbox if you are based in England, Wales or Scotland)
WITH
an exclusive 'Day on the Farm' with Roz to tour the Flower Farm in full bloom, have some training and make a bouquet to take home. Lunch will be provided. There will be dates reserved exclusively for Seed to Vase members to make sure that the day is as useful as possible based on our curriculum.
PLUS
- exclusive Seed to Vase Mug
- copy of Roz's book - Seed to Vase
The investment for the VIP option is £547 or £75 x 8 monthly payments
With this ultra VIP tier, you get full access to the course (with the seedbox if you are based in England, Wales or Scotland)
WITH
all the exclusive bonuses for the VIP tier - the day on the farm, exclusive mug and copy of Roz's book
PLUS
three hours of exclusive, private 121 zoom calls with Roz to be taken by end October 2022, to use as you wish. Discuss planting plans, patch prep, have your questions answered, or pick her brain about anything and everything relating to your cutting patch.
The investment for the Signature option is £997 or £138 x 8 monthly payments.
What did last year's students think of the Seed to Vase course?
Meet Roz, the founder of Field Gate Flowers...
Investment
The Garden Path: a collective journey from seed to vase is a long season of learning and growing together.
The value you’ll get is tremendous!
- You'll have over 28 session - total value of £2100!
- Ditch the nasty chemicals and pesticides
- Lower your carbon footprint
- The ultimate in sourcing locally
You’ll get all this for your investment of £397.
Prefer to pay monthly? Join for £55 pcm.
Investment for our VIP option is £547 or £75pcm.
Investment for our Signature option is £997 or £138pcm.
Hear what clients have to say about Field Gate Flowers...
Meet your guides along The Garden Path: a collective journey from seed to vase
Introducing the Seed to Vase Team
Level 4 Qualified Florist
Decades of experience
Passionate about British blooms
RHS Horticulture Qualified
Self confessed plant nerd with years of horticultural experience
Dedicated plantswoman with special interest in rare plants
Chelsea Gold Medal Winner for Alstroemeria AND Peony!
And the person behind it all, Roz Chandler
Roz Chandler together with her team in Lathbury, Milton Keynes (the home of roundabouts and concrete cows) is passionate about growing, harvesting, and arranging seasonally grown British blooms. Field Gate Flowers established for nearly ten years is a thriving flower farm.
As a child Roz loved nothing more than messing around outdoors. Her favourite memories were on a school French exchange on a farm in France This was a long way from the New Town of Hemel Hempstead that Roz grew up in.
The outdoors featured highly in Roz’s early years, and then she went to Plymouth Polytechnic (those A levels were never going to get her into medical school) to study Environmental Science. Her thesis was on the carcinogenic effects of nitrates from fertilisers in water. A lot of dark winters evening were spent collecting samples in the River Lea. (felt very radical back then).
Nearly 10 years ago Roz purchased a rather sad looking barn with five acres of land and so the dream begun. Roz was a novice and certainly had not come from a background of horticulture.
Roz is passionate about reducing the number of imported flowers coming into the UK. The Dutch government heavily invested in the 1970s and Holland became the hub of European flowers – flowers coming in from Africa and further afield to adorn our supermarket shelves.
When not in the fields, Roz loves having adventures. A keen cyclist she always takes on at least one charity ride a year in far flung places, the most recent have been India, Madagascar, Morocco (those Atlas Mountains) and Vietnam.
On her bucket list is the dream to cycle all the Greek islands over 6 months with just a bike and a friend for charity. What could possibly go wrong?
Roz has two daughters, a husband, 7 pigs, two goats, 5 chickens, a dog and a recently added kitten. What next?
Roz’s dream is to encourage more people to grow, harvest and arrange seasonal flowers.
She truly hopes you will join her on this journey.
You’ll get all this for your investment of £397.
Prefer to pay monthly? Join for £55 pcm.
Investment for our VIP option is £547 or £75pcm.
Investment for our Signature option is £997 or £138pcm.