Flower Journal

The flower journal is where we write down the things people ask us at the farm gate and at the market: what a wedding really costs, how long a bouquet lasts, and why a ranunculus corm goes into the ground claws down. None of it is written by an agency.

We grow on a quarter acre in Abbotsford and cut for weddings, markets, subscriptions and the roadside stand, so everything here comes out of that work. If a stem does not last, we say so. If a colour is not possible in June, we say that too — a flower journal is only useful if it is honest.

Start with the wedding flower budget if you are planning a day, the vase-life guide if you have just been handed a bouquet, or the growing guide if you want ranunculus corms in the ground this autumn. New entries go up through the season, usually when the field gives us something worth writing about.

Most of these notes start as conversations at the Saturday market, standing behind a table of whatever came out of the field that morning. If there is a question you want answered in the flower journal, send it over — the ones we get most often become the next entry.

Everything is grown without imports and cut the week you receive it, which is the thread running through every entry here. Find the farm here if you would rather see it in person, or read about flower subscriptions in Abbotsford and wedding flowers in Abbotsford if you would rather we did the growing.

Everything in the flower journal comes from the field rather than from a content calendar. When a crop does something unexpected — a late frost, a run of heat, a dahlia that opens three weeks early — that is usually the entry worth writing, because it is the thing you will run into in your own garden or at your own wedding.

We also answer the practical questions that never make it into a brochure: how many buckets a sixty-guest wedding actually needs, whether a bouquet can survive a two-hour drive, and what to do when the peonies open the day before the ceremony instead of on it. If it is a question we have been asked twice, it belongs in the flower journal.

Nothing here is sponsored and we do not sell advertising. If a flower is difficult, we say so; if a month is quiet, we say that too. That is the only way a flower journal written by growers stays worth reading after the season ends.

Read the entries in any order, but they are written to sit alongside the shop, the stand and the market stall — the same flowers, the same week, explained. When something appears on the stall with no label, there is usually an entry here that tells you what it is and how to look after it.