I don’t know about you, but when I was planning our wedding I really liked to meet the people behind the business and to get to know them and how they run their company. Don’t you find there are so many gigantic corporations keen to sell us things we don’t really need, whether it be for our wedding or just everyday life.  For me I find it a breath of fresh air to meet small businesses who are creating quality products and services.

I’m always curious to find out who they are, why they run their business, how it came about and what it entails – whether it be creating a stunning wedding cake, growing flowers for a wedding, running a unique and personal wedding venue, or handmaking those beautiful details.  In a world so dominated by the internet, I want to help you get to know some of the businesses who feature on The Natural Wedding Company directory.

So I’m going to try out a new series on the blog, a kind of ‘day in the life’ where you can find out more about some of the companies on The Natural Wedding Company directory and how they grow, make, and run their businesses.  If you have any feedback on this idea (i.e. is it any good?) then please let me know in a comment below, your thoughts really help direct what I bring you on the blog.

Today I’d like to hand over to Maz, who runs The Garden Gate Flower Company in Cornwall, with her friend Becca on a family farm.  The Garden Gate Flower Company grow certified organic, seasonal flowers for weddings and special events.  Their flowers are field grown and beautiful with a naturally arranged style.  Becca and Maz grow a wonderful selection of annuals, shrubs and perennials and love to include scented foliage in their arrangements.

Penelope, Maz and Becca

Over to Maz:

“Our new cutting garden has taken over the paddock in front of Penelope and Chris’s farmhouse near Fowey.  The everyday routine of this organic sheep and mixed arable farm with a few pigs and chickens about too, has been a little disrupted lately by my friend Rebecca (Penny’s daughter), and I. 

I’d like to a paint an idyllic picture of sea views and sunsets over the paddock with our four small children playing contentedly, a healthy glow to their cheeks, among the nodding heads of cornflowers and poppies, black Labradors lazily weaving between spires of English garden favourites, larkspur, delphinium, daisy-like cosmos and aromatic foliage, mint, fennel, dill … when the reality is a little different. 

Torrential rain, burning high winds, small boys fighting over toys, dogs – just fighting, bike riding incidents on loose gravel, the lurking fear of the postsman who drives too fast, slugs, a mower that doesn’t reach the end of the paddock, a rotivator that has the wrong fittings, farm collie Moss, desperate to re-populate the farm with Labrador-collie crosses, his side-kick the earless, blind and somewhat verbal Gwen, Dachshunds that bite people, three legged Labrador-Collie cross, Rosie, and her, four legged sister Mabel, running headlong over seedlings, their mother rolling in every available fox poop.

And if its not them it’s children who can’t resist running/cycling/rolling (take-your-pick) down a line of plants in the ground, or the time when, making their own ‘fun’ the two eldest stuck their fingers into every egg in Penny’s larder ‘looking for chicks’, dog pooh, grass, mud regularly marched through the house by small boys who forget to take their willies off (I mean wellies – private joke!), and kids throwing sticks for the dog which smack you over the head at close range. 

It’s not all roses.  Somehow we have a beautiful website, Becca has perfected the art of bouquet making and produces stunning arrangements rising from the storm (literally and metaphorically) that has become Trezare Farm.  Penny somehow manages to keep baking, smiling and making tea, oh yes and that little thing of running a farm business, and hasn’t yet sworn at a child (as far as I know).  And as for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Dropbox, camera/computer compatibility, technology – do not get me started, although we have had some really positive feedback.  

There are a few things that are constant, Chris calling to his sheep dogs “come on my love” over and over, as the dog lies halfway across a field, sunbathing, and after a while it becomes “COME ON MY LOVE.”  This never fails to make me laugh.  I have never heard a single phrase said with such variety of intonation, volume, and feeling.  The same words convey, I think, a wide range of expectations and commands known only to Chris, and perhaps his Dog, sometimes.  Chris has softened a little from when I heard him mutter ‘this is a bloody farm not a nursery’ as a crazed infant ran past hysterically and now refers to us as ‘old birds’. Brilliant.

We have really nice new gates and rabbit proof fencing, oh yes, and miraculously we have flowers, which are really lovely and organic, lots of them, despite only starting in June.  I do not know how it has come to this, but here we are.  Now all we need is someone to buy a bunch of flowers!”

You can get in touch with Becca and Maz at thegardengateflowercompany@gmail.co.uk or visit their website www.thegardengateflowercompany.co.uk for more details.

Are there any specific questions or details you’d like to know from businesses in future posts?  If there are any businesses (or types of business) from the directory that you’d particular like to hear about, leave me a comment below and I’ll see what I can do.