There is lots of activity on our English farm at this time of year and during my time there on Friday I took a few photos.
Following the hard pruning of our roses in February it's time to feed the beds with organic compost...

The roses are all grown outside but a canopy will be in place by the end of the month. This simply stops the rain from damaging the heads of the roses whilst leaving the air to circulate at the sides.

Wonderful isn't he? Just one of many forms of wildlife living amongst the flowers and foliage on the farm!

This is his lady friend...

I was really excited to see our new hellebores looking good and the first pick will be winging its way over to me at our design studio this week

They're still fairly young so we're not expecting a huge crop this year but we'll have some for our shops. I need to test them in water to make sure they last for 5 to 7 days but I think we're pretty safe to pick them after pollination when we should get the vase life that we need.

By next year we should be able to create some wonderful bouquets with them and that's very exciting indeed!

We've got some bee hives on the farm and we were delighted to spot one of the honey bees getting to work on the hellebores - that's a great sign!

Now it's not often that we get the opportunity to talk about roses and snow in the same post is it? But here it is and I have to admit that I love the romance of it particularly as Valentine's Day is so close.

Okay, it's very cold indeed; the pipes were frozen all day at our workshop and shop, but it is rather lovely and here are some photos to prove it. Do you agree?

Happy nearly Valentine's Day.

The windows of our Midhurst flower shop are full of freshly picked pumkins and seasonal posies this week. The carved pumkins have been a bit of an attraction and its been lovely to see the smiles on people's faces when they walk past.
My partner carved the pumkins and if you'd like to know how he did it look at the photos below...

The dahlia's are still flowering on our English farm but they are slowing down now. They are so beautiful in all their stages of growth don't you agree?

Midhurst and the road through to Goodwood was filled with fabulous vintage cars this weekend for what, in my opinion, is one of the best weekends in the local calendar; The Goodwood Revival.

Our shop windows in Midhurst featured vintage trunks filled with our scented seasonal flowers and lots of on-trend-vintage-inspired dahlias! A gorgeous 1950's dress, on loan from our local vintage emprorium Marmedukes in Rumbolds Hill, took pride of place.

We LOVE this time of year at The Real Flower Company.
There's an abundance of wonderful, seasonal flowers, herbs and foliage to be picked on our English farm; dahlias, echinacea, salvia, cosmos, hydrangea, garden roses (of course!) flowering mint (in every variety), sage, pheasant bush, blackberries, hypericum, scented geranium...there are too many to mention here but we'll keep you posted as we move through the harvest and into September and create our more sensational, seasonal bouquets.

We've launched a pop up shop at the fabulous Anthropologie on the Kings Road in London.
We hope you'll pop in to see us - we'll be there until mid June!

We're thrilled to announce that our new shop opened today in West Street, Midhurst, West Sussex.

What a day it was! About 10 inches of snow fell in Midhurst overnight but it didn't stop us from opening. The fire was lit, the mulled wine warmed up and the scents and sounds of Christmas filled the air.
I live on a steep hill in Midhurst and, having ruled out skiing down to the shop, opted to take the fiat in its new snow socks (highly recommended!).

Thanks so much to all of the local people who came to see us today and for all your lovely comments. Here are some photos from day 1....