Hello, I am Clare Ashcroft, I work from a blue log cabin in my garden as a floral designer specialising in wedding flowers, I also grow flowers in the field next to my house, and I’m a mother to two boys.
I grew up on an arable farm in West Lancashire, and it is from there I feel my love for growing things has stemmed. But I first fell in love with flowers whilst completing my school work placement at the age of 15, then after leaving school I started college to learn as much as I could about floral design, I am very proud to say that I now hold the NDSF qualification which is the UK’s highest floristry award.
During and after my time at college I worked for a few different flower shops gaining valuable knowledge and hands on experience before landing my dream job as a floral design lecturer at Myerscough college in Lancashire. I did this wonderful job full-time for over 6 years before having my two sons. My first child was born twelve weeks prematurely, he was a very poorly boy for a long time, but I can say he is now eight, and other than being a bit skinny you would never know how little he was (less than 2 lb in weight). I found it very difficult going back to work and leaving him, so decided to cut my hours to part-time, and start my business working as a freelance wedding florist from our family farm in Lancashire.
After the birth of my second son I decided to go for it and quit my job, which was a very scary decision, but looking back it was definitely the right choice. I started to concentrate full-time on the business but I was struggling to find, good, reliable suppliers of flowers so I attended a course on growing flowers run by a wonderful woman called Gill Hodgson who also founded the flower growing co-operative flowers from the farm of which I am now the North West area co-ordinator. So it was in 2011 that my husband Andrew, and I decided to combine our skills (he is a farmer), and started to grow traditional, English cottage garden style flowers for use in our bouquets, funeral flowers and wedding arrangements. We now deliver bouquets locally in west Lancashire, and can supply and create flowers for weddings throughout Lancashire, Merseyside & Cumbria.
This blog is all about flowers and other pretty things, it covers what we get up to here on the farm, book reviews of flower related publications, different flower varieties, how to floristry lessons, and lots of photographs of the things we grow and designs we create.
Email – clare@theflowerfarm.co.uk
Website – www.theflowerfarm.co.uk
Facebook – ClareAshcroftFloralDesign
Twitter – the_flower_farm
The Flower Farm 