Kilcoan Gardens in Northern Ireland

Kilcoan Gardens is a recently established business, growing & arranging cut flowers in Co Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Cherry Townsend took up gardening as a hobby about 12 years ago, after her son was born.  This hobby soon turned into an obsession and a few years ago Cherry decided that she would like to be able to earn a living from her love of flowers.

Inspired by an article in Country Living magazine about Jane Lindsey at Snapdragon Gardens in Scotland, Cherry set about converting some of her parents land into her dream business and Kilcoan Gardens was born.

Their old shetland pony was swiftly moved from the prime spot and Cherry started planting. She was fortunate to have an extensive mature garden in situ of 2 acres, featuring a wide range of shrubs and perennials.

With plenty of material to propagate from, the gardens soon started to bloom. A mild maritime climate on the peninsula of Islandmagee (but with plenty of wind!) means considerably less frost than inland, so flowers like dahlias continue for several weeks longer than in gardens further from the coast.

Kilcoan Gardens is currently selling at local farmers’ markets and delivering hand tied bouquets to the local area and through the

website, Cherry hopes to be delivering freshly cut, locally grown flowers throughout Northern Ireland very soon.

Everything at Kilcoan Gardens is seasonal and tended by Cherrys’ own hand.  The extensive range includes; annuals, perennials, herbs, roses and cut flower foliage and berries.

Fresh cut flower arrangements, range from hand tied posies to larger bouquets. Kilcoan Gardens also sell organically grown perennials and herbs.

Seasonal Christmas products include; wreaths, table arrangements and narcissus and iris bulbs which have been forced for a beautiful indoor display. Seasonal arrangements are also available for Mother’s Day and Easter.

All enquiries are welcome, with mail order flowers available soon.

Kilcoan Gardens take pride in being environmentally aware and use recycled materials and packaging wherever possible.

More information

Kilcoangardens.com

Country Living Magazine

British Cut flowers in May

Sue has been asked to arrange the flowers for the wedding of a close friend and whilst she has some knowledge of what is available she would like to find a definitive list of the cut flowers that bloom in the UK in early May. This is both those that she can grow herself or that may be available from suppliers.

Can anybody help?

World Cup Flowers

Many florists are getting into the football spirit and producing window displays featuring World Cup themes.

Vandella Flowers in Carlisle is one such high street florist.

They have produced three large window displays at their store in Carlisle, Cumbria.

With an England theme limiting the designers to white and red, the colours of St. George,  the challenge of producing a display was no doubt quite hard.

Sadly they may have had to resort to some non British cut flowers to pull the task off.

Limited colour pallet

With Scotland, Ireland and Wales not in the World Cup the British florist is somewhat stuck with two colours to work with.

Carnations are the staple of the flower designer providing a multitude of colours.

Here are a few ideas for seasonal flowers to populate your display

England colour scheme – red and white

• Carnations – red and white
• Roses – red and white
• Poppies – red and white
• Daisy family including agyranthemum
• Ranunculus –  red and white
• Lilly – including Lily of the Valley, Asian Lily,
• Red fruits including the strawberry would work for a short duration table display.
• Cow parsley in abundance from British hedgerows is an ideal white bulk flower to fill out any display.
• Japanese Iris and Iris Germanica can be garden grown and provides structure and architecture.
• Pieris – new leaf growth on this shrub is often in shades of red.

Share your designs

Have you produced a World Cup themed display for your window or maybe produced an exhibit for a local horticultural show?

You may have gone really wild and produced displays for all 32 teams.

Let us know about it, via the contact us form,  so we can feature a gallery of your designs and plant lists over the next few weeks.

Andy Sturgeon’s Best in Show

Andy Sturgeon took ‘Best in Show’ at the 2010 RHS Chelsea Flower show with his contemporary dry climate garden.

The gold medal winning Daily Telegraph Garden by Andy Sturgeon has a tidy contemporary feel with pathways leading through different areas of shrubs, herbaceous plants, seated areas and architectural structure.

Although the garden has a modern feel, the pale gravel and sectioned areas provide a sense of space but this does not come at the cost of planting, as so many modern gardens do.

Richly planted areas feature perennials and shrubs which can easily provide arms full of cut flowers and foliage.

This idea can easily be scaled to suit the average garden and the architectural aspect can be kept by replacing the metal structures with tall cypress, like those found in Italian landscapes.

More information

RHS Chelsea - Video tour of Andy Sturgeon’s “best in show” garden.
Andy Sturgeon – Landscape and Garden Design

Peonies as cut flowers

The large blousy blooms of the Peony make wonderful cut flowers and if picked in bud can last for three or more weeks in a vase.

Peonies are native to Europe, Asia and western north America but cope well with the British climate.  Flowering around May and June, the small round buds unfurl to disclose delicate, extravagant blooms ranging from white, through cream and lemon and from palest pink to the deepest burgundy.

Strong stems provide good support in the vase and the flamboyant blooms are great for single display or mixing in a bouquet.

Most Peonies are herbaceous perennials, reaching about 1.5 metres tall.  These totally die back to the ground in winter and regrow in the spring.

Tree Peonies which originated in Asia form a deciduous tree, around 3 metres tall, with some having a delicious fragrance.

Intersectional or Itoh Peonies are a recent development combining the features of the herbaceous and tree varieties.

Growing Peonies

Peonies prefer well drained soil and sunlight.  The tuberous root should only be planted about 5cm below the soil surface.

Wet or windy weather can be a problem, so most peonies require staking to keep the plant looking tidy.

Peony Wilt can affect the plant during wet weather but as the plant dies down over the winter months, the new growth in the spring is often unaffected.

The strong dark leaves of the peony plant provide form and structure in the herbaceous border and they look effective planted alongside Roses, Aquilegia, Nepeta and Penstemon.

Chelsea flower show

Rosie Hardy form Hardy’s cottage garden plants explained to the BBC how to grow Peonies and other garden flowers for a bouquet and Top Mayfair florist Yan Skates won a gold medal for his arrangements featuring British grown garden flowers.

Peony specialists

Binny Plants – Specialist Peony nursery in the UK
Kelway’s – Gold medal winners at Chelsea Flower Show 2010
Claire Austin Hardy Plants – Specialise in Herbaceous, tree and intersectional Peonies.
Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

More information

Telegraph article – focusing on Lord Falmouth’s Kent estate, where they grow fields of peonies to sell as cut flowers,

Chelsea flower show – BBC videos from the Chelsea Flower show 2010

The Peony Society - A focus for Peony enthusiasts all over the world.

How to grow Peonies – In depth information on how to get the best from your herbaceous, tree and intersectional Peonies from Claire Austin.

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