It grew.
Quietly, almost without me noticing at first.
Long before Appleyard Patch had a name, there were gardens.
I grew up around people who knew how to grow things. All four of my grandparents were gardeners in their own ways, and some of my earliest memories are tied to being outside with them — watching, helping, picking, planting and learning without really knowing I was learning.
There were particular plants. Particular flowers. Little ways of doing things. Stories attached to this plant or that one. Things grown because they always had been, and knowledge passed down so naturally that I don’t think I realised at the time just how much of it I was taking in.
Some of those plants and memories have found their way into my own garden now.
I think a love of growing was simply passed down to me.
For years it was just part of who I was. I gardened because I loved it. I grew things because I couldn’t really imagine not growing things.
And then, somewhere along the way, flowers began taking up a little more room.
Finding our Patch
In 2022, we bought a little old farmhouse in West Gippsland.
From the moment we saw it, there was something about it that felt like home.
Over the next couple of years, we slowly breathed fresh life into the house and brought the English garden back to life. There was renovating and planting, pulling things out and putting things in, plenty of dirt, plenty of plans — and, inevitably, plans that changed once we got started.
The garden grew alongside the house. And somewhere in amongst all of that, my love of growing flowers became something of an obsession. I began raising more flowers from seed, then more again. Before long, there were trays of seedlings everywhere, including every surface of our living space. Then beds of flowers. Then armfuls and vases full.
I became fascinated by the whole process — choosing varieties, sowing impossibly tiny seeds, watching for the first green shoots, learning what each plant liked and, quite often, discovering what it absolutely did not.
There is something slightly ridiculous about the amount of pleasure one tiny seedling can bring, but if you know, you know.
Something was beginning
I don’t remember there being a moment when I decided:
I’m going to become a flower farmer. It certainly wasn’t like that. The flowers simply kept growing, and my love for growing them grew too.
At the same time, I discovered how much I loved making things with them and gifting them to those I love. Gathering whatever was growing that day and finding a way for those flowers to belong together.
Growing and floristry became two halves of the same thing for me. I loved knowing a flower from its very beginning - holding the seed in my hand months before and then, eventually, cutting that same flower and placing it into a vase or bouquet.
The idea for Appleyard Patch emerged somewhere amongst all of that. Not from a grand business plan. Just from a growing sense that perhaps this thing I loved could become something more.
And eventually, it did.
A family Patch
Although Appleyard Patch began with my love of growing flowers, it certainly doesn’t happen because of me alone.
This little farm is woven into our family life.
Trevor is forever helping with the jobs that somehow require another pair of hands — building, fixing, moving, digging and generally being called outside because “can you just help me with something for a minute?” has turned into a considerably larger project.
Jack and Lily are part of life on the Patch too. Sometimes willingly, sometimes because they happen to walk past at precisely the wrong moment. They’ve grown up with dirt under their fingernails, flowers on the kitchen table, seed trays appearing in inconvenient places and an understanding that beautiful things often simply take time.
Perhaps, without any of us really noticing, something is being passed down again. Just as it was passed down to me.
Why flowers?
Because flowers are beautiful, of course.
But I think it’s more than that. There is something about growing them that I’ve never quite been able to explain. There is the anticipation of sowing a seed. The tiny triumph when it germinates. The months of tending something that isn’t ready yet.
And then, one morning, it is. A flower you’ve never grown before. An old favourite returning. Or an entire bed that seems to have burst into bloom overnight.
Then comes the other part I love, taking what the garden has grown and making something lovely with it. There is creativity in floristry, but there is also restraint. The season has already made many of the decisions for me. I can’t simply demand a particular flower because I’d quite like it that week. I work with what is here, what is beautiful and what is ready.
And strangely, I think that’s where some of the magic lies.
A slower kind of flower growing
Appleyard Patch is small.
Deliberately so. We’re not trying to grow every flower, in every colour, every week of the year. We grow seasonally, choosing varieties for their character, movement and beauty, including old-fashioned favourites, heirloom varieties and flowers I simply can’t resist growing.
We grow with care for the soil beneath our feet and the life around us. There are insects amongst the flowers, birds in the garden, seed heads left standing, compost being made and plants at various stages of glorious imperfection.
We are learning all the time and Mother Nature remains very good at reminding us how miraculous she can be and also who is actually in charge.
And here we are.
What began as a love of gardening became a love of growing flowers.
That became flowers given to people, and eventually a little flower farm and florist studio with a kitchen table quite often covered in stems.
Appleyard Patch. It still feels small. It still feels personal. And I hope it always does.
Because beneath the flowers, the bouquets and whatever this little business may become, the heart of it is still remarkably simple:
A family.
A garden.
A Patch of soil we’re lucky enough to care for and flowers grown here, slowly and seasonally, before heading out into the world to become part of somebody else’s story.