Nic's pick of the month: Grow Your Own Christmas Dinner
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Collie Flowers' musings on creating a dream garden
10 Steps to Growing Your Dream Garden with Collie Flowers If there’s one thing I’ve learned about gardening, it’s this: the best gardens don’t just happen—they’re planned with care, love, and a touch of dirt under the nails! Whether you’re dreaming of vibrant blooms, a kitchen brimming with fresh veggies, or simply a peaceful green escape, here’s my tried-and-true guide to growing your dream garden. 1. Start with a Planner No need for anything fancy! My go-to is a humble notebook, where I jot down ideas, sketches, and tasks. Think of it as your gardening journal—a place to dream, scheme, and stay organised. 2. Focus on What Matters It’s your garden, so let it reflect you. Whether it’s aa veggie patch for the family, a cut-flower bed, or a quiet nook for a morning coffee, think about how you want to use your space rather than just how it looks. 3. Start with the End in Mind What’s your ultimate goal? A summer harvest of juicy tomatoes? A spring border bursting with tulips? Once you’ve defined your vision, it’s easier to break it down into manageable steps. 4. Choose What to Grow Here’s where the fun begins! With your goal in sight, start picking plants that bring it to life. Whether you’re sowing seeds, planting plugs, or splurging on mature trees, choose what excites you. 5. Check Your Tools Before the real work begins, take stock of your tools. Is your spade up to the task? Do your gloves have more holes than a colander? Investing in good-quality tools now will make your gardening year smoother—and maybe even a bit more fun! 6. Plan Your Key Tasks With a clear vision, map out the big jobs for the year. Breaking tasks into monthly or seasonal chunks means no surprises and no mad dashes to get everything done at once. 💡 Top Tip: All of Collie Flowers sowing and growing information is avaialble on the website, so make use of it. 7. Pick the Right Spots Plants thrive when they’re in the right conditions. Whether it’s sun-loving tomatoes or shade-happy ferns, match your plants to their perfect spots. 8. Sow and Plan Purchases I’m a big believer in growing from seed—it’s cost-effective, satisfying, and gives you plenty of choice. That said, some plants (like trees or peonies - which are at the top of my to buy list) are best bought in, and plugs can save you time. Find what works for you—and don’t forget to budget for it! 9. Care for Your Plants From seedlings to established shrubs, every plant needs a little TLC. Regular watering, weeding, and feeding are all part of the process. And trust me, the care you put in will show in the results! 10. Enjoy Your Reward This is why we do it, isn’t it? Whether it’s your first daffodil in spring, a flourishing veggie harvest, or simply the joy of sitting in a garden you’ve nurtured, take time to savour your success.
If you could ask me one question what would it be?
Seeds of Success: Decoding Open-Pollinated, Hybrid, and Heirloom Seeds
One of the biggest wildlife challenges we face isn’t an abundance of something we don’t want, but a lack of something vital!
Who else forgot to change the clocks before they went to bed last night, but set their alarm as usual! I was really looking forward to that extra hour in bed too, but it gave me time to do some planning and work before it was light enough to go for a walk. For the next few weeks I'm going to be appreciating that we can get out for a walk again before 7am, but complaining about the dark evenings when we're resigned to pavement walks. But I'll also be trying to make the most of what light we do have before and after work to get some much needed jobs done at the allotment. Collie Flowers have been "live" for just over a fortnight now and in every possible way it's exceeded my expectations. I've made connections with people online who are like minded and love gardening, I even met someone this morning while out walking Cooper who asked me if we were "Nic and Cooper from the Collie seeds place", they'd just started following us and recognised Cooper's distinctive face. I think that, almost as much as our first order that made me happy about what we've achieved. We've even had a mention on the radio; now that didn't go quite as I planned it but nonetheless gave us some great exposure. A note for anyone whoever wants to write into a radio show, a beautiful handwritten letter might seem a great idea in your head, but typewritten is more legible! But more than the orders, the exposure and the online following we're building, Collie Flowers is focussing my mind more on the garden and allotment and making sure I'm spending time in both doing the jobs that are needed. Having spent most of this year locked away planning for Collie Flowers I feel like I'm now striking a better balance between work (day-job), home, family, Collie Flowers and the gardens. I'm also far more focussed when I'm in the garden on what I want to do and getting it done, of course I still spend time pottering, looking and planning but I'm not procrastinating as much as I used to. Which is a good thing as there are quite a few jobs to do before the Head Gardener and Compost Man return from their travels in a few weeks and judge how well I've been looking after things. The focus has definitely been helped by writing about what we gardeners could be doing at this time of year. As much as the new In the Garden pages are there to be a helpful guide for anyone, I'm going to be using them in part as my to do list! So keep an eye on those pages as they develop for jobs you can do each month to keep your garden growing. We've also been busy preparing for the future. Christmas isn't too far away and we're going to be launching a few new curated collections for our Seed Tins and Seed Calendar to coincide with the season and also what us gardeners will want to be doing over the first few months of 2023. I've also learned that in retail, planning for Christmas beings in the summer, so I've got a bit of catching up to do as my summer was spent focussed on the launch only, but in just a couple of weeks we'll have something special to share with you. That's not all we've been doing, Collie Flowers is going physical as well as digital. In just 6 weeks we'll be taking or products to a Christmas Fair and in 2023 we've planned our attendance at a few Artisan and Gift Markets that are local to us. We'd really like to see some friendly faces there, so if you're in the area, or fancy a roadtrip do come by for a bit of gardening chat and maybe to stock up on your seeds for next year.
40 weeks of gestation. Thats how long it takes to grow and develop a baby ready for this world, but when I first had my big idea I had no idea it would also take me that long to develop a business to the point it was ready to be unleashed upon the world too. So let's rewind, to a cold day in January 2022. Opening up my seed tin (old biscuit box), getting out my planner (5 year old scrap of very tatty paper with sowing and harvesting info, coloured in with pencils borrowed from my son), looking at the chaos in front of me and thinking there must be a better way. I searched online, I could find plenty of downloadable sowing and growing calendars, but they covered almost every type of veggie and flower. I didn't want all of them, just the ones that I wanted to grow. I also didn't want an excel table, I see far too many of those in the day job, and yes they're functional but they're not designed. They convey information in a purely functional way. I wanted the practical information, but was a little bit of design too much to ask too! But it wasn't just about having a plan on a page, I wanted more. Because I don't know about you, but when I open a pack of seeds more often than not I rip off some of the growing instructions or end up with just the little foil sachet separated from the main packet with no information for what to do with them when I need it. And when your fingers are covered in compost, trying to unlock your phone to find the information you need online is more hassle than it's worth. That was my bright idea, to solve my own problem and hopefully one that other people encountered too. Within the space of about two hours I'd formulated in my mind our two flagship products, the Personalised Seed Calendar and our Let's Get Growing Pocket Companions & Growing Guides. So I got to work, countless hours over the first few weeks researching, writing, designing and editing until I had something I could show a fellow gardener as a prototype of my idea. They loved it! Admittedly, it was my mum so she's somewhat biased, but she's a gardener, the one who after years of trying to get me to join her was so pleased when I finally caught the bug. If she thought it could be useful, maybe other people would too! But she and my husband made me expand the idea, it couldn't just be the information, the one thing a gardener covets above all else is seed! We needed to give people something to grow, not just give them the theory. With that came the thought that as well as allowing people to create the garden of their dreams through personalising their calendars, seed tins and pocket companions, maybe we should introduce some collections too, so we did 12 (and counting) so far. Seed catalogues are gardeners' porn, and when you manage to get hold of a wholesale catalogue (or several as we needed to find the right supplier for us) - OMG! Be prepared to lose days of your life flicking through getting excited about the possibilities. As I did more research and this idea began to take shape as something that could become real it needed a name, as someone who loves growing vegetables, flowers and has a Border Collie the name came quickly - Collie Flowers. I'd called Cooper my little Collie Flower for sometime, since he dug his first hole in the garden and plonked himself down there to cool off. Fast forward now to the present day, we're about 3 weeks from launching Collie Flowers, most days I feel a little bit nauseous and think maybe it would be better if I just saved it all for me. But it wouldn't, I've invested so much of my time on evenings and weekends outside of the day job into developing and refining this that it deserves to see the light of day. And maybe, just maybe it'll help a few people create the garden of their dreams. If you're reading this pre-launch, why not sign up for our newsletter and be amongst the first to know when we go live, as well as receive regular updates from us and special offers.