Irish flower farms: what they grow and how to find one

The number of people growing cut flowers commercially in Ireland has changed more in the last ten years than in the fifty before it. Flower Farmers of Ireland, the volunteer-led association that represents them, now counts over 100 member farms across the island, and the striking thing is how small most of them are. Members work anything from a few square metres of cutting garden to several acres.

What made that viable was not a change in Irish weather or Irish demand. It was selling direct. A grower who sells at a market, at the gate or straight to a couple planning a wedding keeps the margin that used to be split between an auction, an importer and a wholesaler. That is the difference between a one-acre flower farm being a hobby and being a living.

What they actually grow

Irish farms grow what Irish conditions do well and what the import trade cannot carry. Those two categories overlap almost completely, which is the whole business model.

Sweet pea is the clearest example. It has a vase life of four or five days, it bruises if you look at it, and it is therefore commercially useless to anyone shipping through the Dutch auctions. Grown ten miles from where it is sold, it is a flower people will queue for. The same logic covers cornflower, larkspur, ammi, scabious, garden roses, ranunculus, and the flowers that fill Irish farms from June onward.

Then there are the crops that suit our climate outright. Dahlias run from July to the first frost and carry most farms through autumn. Peonies give four weeks in late May and June. Daffodils are the one flower Ireland grows at genuine commercial scale, from late February to April. Hydrangeas cut late in the season will dry in a vase and keep for years. The month-by-month calendar covers the full year, including the two months where the answer is foliage and dried flowers.

Almost all of it is field-grown, with polytunnels used to stretch the shoulders of the season rather than to defeat it. Expect variation between stems, some insect damage, and shorter stems than an imported equivalent. Expect scent, which long-haul roses generally do not have.

Weddings and DIY buckets

Wedding work is where most Irish farms make their money, and it is where the economics favour the buyer most clearly.

Full floristry. The grower cuts, conditions and arranges everything. Priced like any wedding florist, because it is the same labour. What differs is the material: you get what is standing in the field that week, in the colours you have agreed, and a grower will tell you frankly if what you have asked for is not going to exist in your month.

DIY buckets. The option worth knowing about. You buy buckets of mixed seasonal stems and foliage, cut to order and conditioned, and collect them from the farm a day or two beforehand. You do the arranging. This is a large saving against full floristry and it is a genuinely different proposition: buckets of flowers arrive as raw material, and somebody has to spend the day before the wedding turning them into thirty table arrangements. It works when there is a person who wants that job and has done it before. It goes badly when it lands on a relative at nine o'clock the night before.

Wholesale to florists. Many growers supply independent Irish florists in season. This is the route by which most people who buy Irish-grown do so without knowing it, which is why it is worth asking a florist where the stems came from.

Workshops and cut-your-own. A number of farms run wreath-making in November and December and cut-your-own mornings in July and August. These are advertised on each farm's own site and they book out.

Four farms worth knowing about

These are named because their own sites set out clearly what they do. There are over a hundred others, and none of these should be read as a recommendation over any grower closer to you.

• Bumblebee Flower Farm, at Castledonovan near Drimoleague in west Cork, grows nectar-rich seasonal flowers and foliage on regenerative principles and does sustainable wedding work. It is one of the few Irish farms supplying bouquets right through the year from its own ground and local foraging.

• Bell Meadow, run by Maria Ryan in rural Co Carlow, specialises in sweet pea, peonies, narcissi and flowers for drying, with dahlias, cornflowers and zinnias through the summer. It does local delivery around Carlow, Castledermot and Baltinglass, wedding work, wholesale to florists, workshops and cut-your-own mornings in late July and August.

• Howe Hill Flowers, a half-acre cutting garden and floral design studio at Howe Strand, Kilbrittain on the west Cork coast, is a wedding and event specialist working mainly with its own homegrown blooms and foliage.

• Leitrim Flowers, set up in 2009 by Ciaran and Kealin Beattie in south Co Leitrim, has grown to twelve acres. It sells cut flowers, arranges wedding flowers, supplies businesses and restaurants, grows edible flowers and runs training courses, and sells at Carrick on Shannon farmers market on Thursdays from March to October.

Finding one near you

The county-by-county finder on the Flower Farmers of Ireland site is the practical tool. It lists members by county, each with a link straight to their own website, social page, phone or email, and tags each one with the services it offers: gift flowers, weddings and events, market flowers, wholesale, DIY flowers, training and workshops, and dried flowers.

Two pieces of etiquette. Most of these are working farms rather than visitor attractions, so contact people before arriving rather than turning up at a gate. And ask about the season before you ask about a variety: a grower who tells you in January that they cannot do what you want in April is doing you a favour.

What a farm cannot do for you

Small growers cannot do next-day delivery to an address in another county, cannot guarantee a named variety on a fixed date months ahead, and mostly cannot supply anything at all between November and February. For a bereavement in December or a last-minute gift to somewhere you have never been, this is not the route, and the growers themselves will say so.

Used the way it works best, though, buying from a farm is the cheapest good flowers in Ireland: a bucket of dahlias in September, collected from the gate, costs less than a supermarket bouquet of imported roses and lasts longer. The rest of the case for buying this way is set out in Irish-grown flowers.