The September Edit
The Gardens teach patience - nothing rushes, yet everything changes. September has always felt like a moment suspended between seasons and space - still warm enough to remember the unforgiving heat of a dry, high-summer, but edged with the quiet promise of Autumn - a shift in pace and growth. Gathering plump dahlias and spotting a delicate but defiant Spring poppy; freeing seeds from their papery cases and plucking a nearby Summer viola. Transitions and overlap. Renewal and decay.
For The Prairie Edit, September marks the beginning of the end of the growing season, but also the end of a beginning - our very first growing season. By October, flowers will slow, seeds will emerge ready for harvesting, leaves will curl and drop, and the air will cool. A year of learning, watching, nurturing.
The Cutting Garden began as a tiny kernel of an idea, protectively held close, in September 2024. For many years I was growing cut flowers for the simple joy of harvesting flowers to gift to friends and family, and to fill jugs and vases in our home. I read every book on growing and flower farming that I could get my hands on; invested in the Floret Flower Farming course; sketched ideas and made notes - feverishly scribbled on scraps of paper. I bought a poly tunnel and crates of bulbs. Packets and packets of seeds - promises of flowers in the most beautiful, painterly palettes.
What followed was months and months of early mornings and late nights; digging, shovelling, covering, staking, planting, watering, deadheading . . . And then in April, my first harvest. Buckets of fresh, homegrown tulips, narcissi, germs and ranunculus in sorbet shades, full of scent. Sold to local farm shops and village stores.
May welcomed peonies and roses, sweet peas and foxgloves. Mid Summer - cosmos and zinnias, grasses and dahlias, and flower markets and weddings! There have been challenges! Aphids, drought, heatwaves, mice! I have learnt patience; pace; mindfulness and presence. I have learnt, and am still learning, planning and organisation - succession planting, crop rotation, cutting techniques. That tiny kernel, though not quite an oak just yet, is setting roots and holding firm.
Now, as the seeds are collected and flower beds are turned and covered, I feel a quiet satisfaction in seeing how much has grown in one full season. As the season winds down, we’re planning for what comes next - Autumn sowing, soil care, planting. It’s almost time to pause and reflect - gathering what this first year has taught us: patience, resilience, rhythm, and above all, JOY.