Welcome to the Patch.
Seasonally grown flowers, gathered by hand, from our little patch of West Gippsland.
Nestled amongst the rolling green hills of West Gippsland, Appleyard Patch is our little micro flower farm and florist studio. Here the flowers are grown from seed, gathered by hand and arranged with love right here on the Patch.
We grow slowly and thoughtfully, following the seasons rather than trying to convince nature to follow us.
The result is flowers with character — sometimes graceful, sometimes a little wild, and always belonging entirely to the moment in which they grew.
Grown here. Gathered here.
There is something rather wonderful about knowing where your flowers came from.
Ours begin here, in the soil beneath our feet.
From the first tiny seeds sown in trays, through months of tending, waiting and watching, until finally the garden decides they’re ready.
Then they’re gathered — often only hours before they reach your hands.
What grows changes constantly.
One week the garden might be overflowing with sweet peas; another brings armfuls of dahlias, delicate cosmos, fragrant herbs or something unusual I’ve been waiting all season to see flower.
There is no constant catalogue to choose from. Instead, we work each day with what the Patch gives us. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
A garden, gathered by hand.
I have always loved flowers that look as though they could still be growing in a rambling garden.
Stems with movement. A wandering tendril. Herbs, seed heads and whatever else happens to be beautiful that day.
I don’t need every stem standing obediently in its place. I want each bouquet to feel gathered rather than constructed — like a little piece of the garden gathered together, wrapped in paper and tied with string.
No two are quite alike, each one unique.
Everything begins beneath our feet.
Before there are flowers, there is soil.
We believe that caring for our little patch of land is part of the privilege of growing on it. Feed the soil, and the soil will feed the plants.
So rather than trying to make the garden behave the way we want it to, we work with it — building the soil, sowing with the seasons, welcoming the insects and birds, growing a diverse mix of flowers, herbs and useful plants, and accepting that sometimes nature has other ideas.
It isn’t always the easiest or quickest way, yet it simply feels like the right one for us.
Flowers are meant to be given.
Perhaps this is the part I love most.
Something begins as a seed in my hand. Months later, it comes inside in a bucket with the rest of the day’s picking, finds its place amongst other flowers, is wrapped in paper and then it leaves the farm gate, destined for someone I may never meet.
A birthday. A wedding. A new baby. Someone who needs cheering up. Someone being thanked. Or perhaps it’s simply going to sit on a kitchen table and change the way the room feels for a little while.
There is something very special about being one small and beautiful part of that.
A little more from the Patch.
There is more to this place than the flowers that leave the gate.
There are seeds being sown, beds being prepared, buckets filling and emptying, experiments that work and plenty that don’t. There are old varieties I fall in love with, things I’m learning, things the garden teaches me, and seasons that never seem to unfold quite the same way twice.
Every now and then, I’ll share some of it here.
Not a perfectly polished version of flower farming.
Just life on our little Patch, as it happens.