Place Categories: flower growers, Workshops and flower workshops
The Real Cut Flower Garden cut flowers are grown outdoors near Bridport in Dorset. We also offer a range of floral workshops to teach you creative ways with flowers.
Charlie Ryrie started the business because of her deep love of gardens and traditional flowers. She spent two decades as a journalist writing about gardens, the environment and ecological design, and has always had a passion for flowers. In 2002 she bought a field in Herefordshire, and in 2004 started sending out flowers to customers nationwide, and making stunning arrangements for weddings and events.
She is now well known for her beautiful and unusual combinations, her unflappability, and genuine love for what she produces. In 2012 the gardens moved to Dorset where she continues to provide amazing flowers from her own gardens with a small team of helpers. She works with some of the country’s best known events companies as well as providing glorious wedding flowers.
Our Flowers
Our flowers are home grown and hand picked to order. The varieties of blooms and foliage that we use depend on the time of year and the weather. Arrangements are natural, uncontrived and on the wild side. But elegant enough to grace a sophisticated event and unpretentious enough for a kitchen table. We use many flowers that conventional florists just can’t offer. And also grow hundreds of old fashioned scented roses.
We provide flowers for occasions ranging from intimate dinner parties to large events, from celebrations to memorials and also individual gift bouquets.
Why I Grow Wild
Two decades ago I turned from writing about gardens and the environment to doing something about it, transforming an impoverished five acre field into an organic cutting garden, The Real Cut Flower Garden. After years trying out and observing hundreds of different flowering plants, I became increasingly obsessed about how things grow, when and how they do best, what makes the difference, and how we can grow sustainably in this era of climate change.
A move to a different site allowed me to experiment further, decreasing my acreage, changing my growing habits and redistributing hundreds of my original plants (happily into the custody of some extremely good cut flower providers). The ground rules here, literally, soil is the top consideration although I am gardening on heavy clay at sea level so it is non-draining and hard as iron or puddled and muddy if left untended or farmed conventionally. I scarcely weed or water as flowers grow in mixed borders and I use most weeds to help as living mulches and conditioners – I try to remove brambles and bindweed if they threaten to overpower. I plant according to what plants prefer and what the gardens offer, I do not start with a wishlist of specific plants but grow subjects that absolutely suit this environment, planning for resilience in this time of climate change. Each year there are surprises as more wildflowers drift in to the mix from goodness knows where, and plants spread where I didn’t place them.
The gardens are productive and alive with birds insects and small mammals, I have seen hedgehogs and grasssnakes here and thousands of different insects. It is a joy to cut flowers from these gardens to adorn celebrations, and an equal joy to introduce others to this way of gardening,. tending the soil and growing with nature rather than imposing a garden upon nature.
The gardens here do not look as people expect from a garden created for cutting., but almost every plant was chosen to be a cutting candidate, from the groundcover to the hedges. There is joy in creating a productive garden that delights the senses while knowing it is doing as much as it can for biodiversity and our future.
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