How business is blossoming for a keen horticulturalist

Only those within a 20-mile mile radius of Low Clifton, between Cockermouth and Workington, can buy the exquisite bouquets grown and created at Cumberland Flower Farm - unless you’re getting married in the county or visiting the flower farm in person. Harriet Smithson, founder and owner of the business, is proud to be providing the service for locals.

Since the business was set up in February 2018 the ethos of Cumberland Flower Farm has always been to provide pleasure to Cumbrian residents. “Being able to provide for our local area is very important; I love the sharing element and for people to give them and the joy people get when they receive them. I love colour and I love the joy that flowers bring,” she says. Starting on an allotment where growing flowers soon overtook the vegetables, Harriet realised the business had ‘legs’ when she started selling some of her blooms. A year later she and her husband Martyn bought six acres of pasture and woodland near their home. They are currently using one acre for flowers and half an acre for foliage so they can create bouquets using all their own greenery.

From March to the end of October the acreage is now filled with country garden favourites, from anemones and tulips to cosmos, ammi, cornflowers, roses and chrysanthemums. At the height of the season Harriet is picking one to two thousand stems a week for weddings and the 20 or so bunches she sells alongside a handful of gift bouquets. This year she is providing flowers for 45 weddings and also sometimes sells at Oakhurst Garden Centre in Cockermouth for special occasions like Mother’s Day. In the past has also sold her flowers through Tebay services and Rheged. “There’s more demand than I can manage really,” she says.

During Covid the business expanded into the wedding market when Low Hall near Lorton asked them to supply flowers for the micro weddings they were hosting between the lockdowns. “People absolutely loved it and then a couple of local venues have recommended me on Instagram. In the last three years our wedding work has become a massive part of what we do, about 80 per cent. People choose a colour scheme… white, pastels or brights and that helps me plan how many flowers I grow.”

She’s pragmatic and says because of the weather and pests she always needs a back up… just in case. So she sources from other British grown suppliers in Cornwall and Lincolnshire if needed. “Eighty three per cent of weddings we did last year we only used flowers grown here,” she says. None of the flowers she uses are imported, something which helped her business recently become accredited by the Sustainable Wedding Alliance (set up to help the wedding industry reach net zero by 2030); the first business in Cumbria to do so.

Harriet is genuinely passionate about sustainability. “Most cut flowers, 80 per cent in this country, are imported and the carbon footprint is huge. Our product is very sustainable, no chemicals and we put a lot of effort into using the right compost products locally. Environmental issues are important to us, how we live and our business as well. Cumbria is a huge wedding destination and the average wedding has an average carbon footprint for a household for a year. A bouquet of flowers in the supermarket can have the same carbon footprint as a short haul flight from London to Paris. We produce a bouquet and it’s one per cent of that,” she says.

She does all the growing and floristry herself which takes up the majority of her time. The things she doesn’t enjoy about running her own business – IT, graphic design, creating the website – she has outsourced. “I did a History of Art degree and I’ve always been a maker, been creative. I’ve always grown flowers and so for me this is about following my interests.” She says that people have this idea of her drifting around beautiful fields full of flowers. “They don’t think of the days when I’m out there in the wet and cold! Then you have days when you pick the flowers and are surrounded by flowers and scent and it’s wonderful… it keeps me going!”

She has no major plans for expansion. “The postal system is too fraught,” she says. “I want to go slowly and at my own pace,” she adds, talking about spending family time with her husband and three young children. Her business currently turns over around £50,000 pa and she employs casual labour for specific jobs. “My aspiration is to employ people all year round but I do not feel it is the right time to gear change at the moment. It’s at a manageable level and I want to keep it at its current level.” She’s recently invested in more perennials and also an irrigation scheme and says there are more efficiencies she plans to make in terms of the growing this year. “Everything is done with a long-term view, making decisions about what we want to do in a few years’ time. I wanted to create beautiful flowers for people’s homes but I did not expect the wedding focus. I have a vision of how the field will be… one of my goals is to increase production for homes and I am looking for that to be a more steady part of what we do.”

Harriet decided on the name of her business long before Allerdale Borough Council – where she used to work as an arts development officer – was absorbed into the new unitary authority of Cumberland Council last year. ”When I chose Cumberland it was an old vintage word. Now it sounds quite corporate!” she says, something her business very definitely isn’t.