Based out of Spilsby, Hannah’s Flowers offers freshly cut, seasonal British blooms between March and late October.
The business is a diversification from the family’s small vegetable farm and sees Hannah cut, pack and supply wholesale markets, florists and the general public.
“I was studying agriculture at Riseholme College but moved to a production horticulture course as growing veg wasn’t really a great fit. As part of my new course, I started growing some flowers and ever since then I’ve just continued to expand and grow a bit more as dad has let me have more land.”
“I’m really passionate about advocating for British cut flower growers and introducing people to the industry who maybe don’t normally see it as a typical farming sector.”
Hannah Benson, former SYFAP
Today, the business is flourishing with Hannah growing flowers across five acres – mainly outdoors, but with some more delicate blooms kept safe under the polytunnel.
She hand sows all her seeds and grows more than 50 different varieties of flowers over the seasons with her favourites including lupins, alliums, sweet Williams and softer blooms like cosmos and zinnias for wedding flowers and helichrysum and acroclinium for her dried flower work.
After branching out from growing carrots, parsnips, brassicas, leeks, beans and beetroot with her dad for wholesale and some market traders, Hannah went self-employed with her diversification in 2017.
Pre-Covid, she sold solely wholesale, but when the pandemic saw the country go into lockdown in March 2020 with restrictions on social interactions and retail businesses forced to close, Hannah recognised an opportunity to up her game.
She began using her social media pages to sell to the public, who saw her flowers as a way to treat themselves and spread a little spring cheer during a tough time.
Building on that success, Hannah now sells to three wholesalers and the general public, offering custom-made seasonal bouquets, occasion flowers, jam jar blooms, and dried flower wreaths.
She also runs a DIY ‘Flower Bar’ where the public can pop along to the farm, go into the barn, and make their own bouquets from pre-cut flowers which are priced per stem, in addition to seasonal wreath making classes and plans for flower arranging courses in the near future.
“It’s an ever-changing market and you can’t just stick at one thing,” she says. “You have to keep evolving and moving with the trends.”
Facing the realities of flower growing
It’s been a learning curve to get to this point, she adds, and anyone thinking of diversifying into flowers needs to understand it takes more than just a green thumb.
“It takes time, that’s my number one tip,” Hannah says. “It’s not going to happen overnight, and you obviously must work with the seasons and build year-on-year. I’ve been growing since 2015 and it’s taken until now to really establish the crops, the perennials, and not to mention the customer base.”
The biggest challenge, Mother Nature, is, however, out of your control.
“Like any farmer or grower, you’re dealing with the weather all the time – I’ve experienced both flooding and drought and it’s tough, really tough.
“My other top tip is irrigation. If you’re going to grow flowers, make sure you have irrigation.”
Making a difference as a SYFAP
As the first NFU Student & Young Farmer Ambassador in the cut flower sector, Hannah worked to highlight the industry as well as production horticulture and to educate the next generation about a career in the sector.
“I’m really passionate about advocating for British cut flower growers and introducing people to the industry who maybe don’t normally see it as a typical farming sector,” she said in her application video for the NFU programme.
“Everybody looks at farming for food, which is perfectly understandable, but sometimes the ornamental sector is overlooked, and we also bring a lot to the table. Cut flowers is quite a profitable sector within farming, agriculture and horticulture and this is a path young people can take.
“For me, education is key. I’m really keen to make young people aware of cut flower farming as a career and we do need more young people coming into the sector as it is, predominantly, an older crowd.”
With regards to how flowers differ to veg, Hannah says weather aside, her venture is somewhat easier than her dad’s.
“With veg, people are very specific as to how they want it to look. There is also lots of washing and packing required and with that comes a lot of expenditure, whereas with flowers, while you still have the same high expenditure is terms of growing, when it comes to harvesting, you just cut the stem, wrap it and sleeve it and then you’re pretty much done. Obviously, it’s more labour-intensive when it comes to putting bouquets together, but for wholesale, it’s much easier."
