Feel good flowers

Nostalgia strikes with cut flowers – from Leitrim rather than Kenya – and they're organically grown, too, writes FIONNUALA FALLON

IF YOU’VE EVER buried your nose in the delicate ruffles of even a single sweet pea flower, then you’ll know that its perfume is one that’s both leafy and bewitchingly sweet – a nostalgic, nostril-assaulting scent that sings of warm summer days and sun-drenched hours in the garden. In Ciaran and Kealin Beattie’s flower-filled polytunnels in Kilnagross, Co Leitrim, where the 8ft tall, colourful lines of sweet pea plants stretch their tendrils up towards the roof, and their purple, pink and white blooms number in the hundreds (perhaps even the thousands), that same rich, heavy fragrance is all-enveloping.

Sometimes it’s mixed with the peppery, sugary smell of Sweet William flowers or the intense perfume of Brompton stock growing nearby; a potent combination that floats seductively on the warm air currents and drifts out of the doorways in great fragrant waves so that even at 20 or 30 paces away, your senses are softly soothed by it.

When the Beatties left Dublin in 2008 to live in this rural corner of Leitrim, it was in search of a gentler pace of life – one that would allow them to make a living off the land while doing something they enjoyed. Ciaran, a trained horticulturist, hit on the idea of growing chemical-free cut flowers for local markets, and so the business they christened as Leitrim Flowers was born.

“We knew that there would be a market for freshly harvested, organically-cultivated, country flowers that were locally grown and that came with a low carbon footprint, rather than being shipped long distances from countries like Kenya, Colombia or Ethiopia. It’s just the same as people wanting to buy fresh, chemical-free, locally-grown vegetables or fruit.”

Despite Ciaran’s horticultural training and experience as a landscape gardener and Kealin’s strong business background, Leitrim Flowers’ first few years were a “very steep learning curve”. Mice stole the freshly-sown seeds, slugs devoured young seedlings and rabbits ate both bulbs and plants. Meanwhile, the couple “read up, read up and read up” so they’d be as proficient in the business as possible.

Discovering exactly which varieties would be the best suited to organic cut-flower production was a challenge: they had to be floriferous, long-flowering, seasonal, easy to cultivate without the use of pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertilisers and have a long vase life.

“It was an awful lot of trial and error,” says Kealin. “But in the end, it paid off.” These days, the damp meadows that make up the Beatties’ flower farm are filled in early summer with neat rows of merry marigolds, scarlet lychnis and lime-green lady’s mantle. By late summer and early autumn, these will be followed by jewel-coloured asters, the large chartreuse flower-heads of Hydrangea ‘Limelight’ and marmalade-coloured rudbeckias. In spring, the sloping fields will be filled with drumstick primulas and sweetly-scented varieties of daffodil and narcissus.

As for the three polytunnels, they’re used intensively to grow an ever-rotating range of flower crops, in much the same way that another grower might cultivate a range of vegetables or salad crops. On the day I visited, I spotted frothy gypsophila, lacy tangles of Love-in-a-Mist, magenta achillea, the carmine-pink, daisy-shaped flowers of cosmos, even the delicate white umbels of the fashionable Bishop’s weed, Ammi majus – a plant that was the star of several Chelsea show gardens a couple of years ago.

As the season progresses, these will give way to other plants so that by springtime, Leitrim Flowers’ polytunnels are filled with St Brigid’s anemones, hyacinths and wallflowers.

The flowers are harvested in their hundreds by the Beatties once a week, and then sold as mixed bouquets in the farmer’s markets in Sligo and Carrick-on-Shannon as well as to the newly-opened garden centre, Howbert and Mays Gardens, in Monkstown, Co Dublin.

“The flowers that we sell are traditional, cottage garden kinds that remind older people of their childhood,” says Kealin. “It’s not unusual for us to see someone getting a bit teary-eyed, or for them to tell us that the scent brings back memories of their parents’ or their grandparents’ gardens.”

The Beatties also sell a selection of their bouquets and some edible flowers to local restaurants and hotels, as well as providing flower arrangements for many different events (Ciaran is the chief flower-arranger).

“People love the idea that the flowers are Irish-grown, and produced in an environmentally friendly, sustainable way,” Kealin points out.

As for the notion of anyone having a crack at growing their own flowers for a family event, the Beatties are all for the idea, as long as people keep in mind the effect that varying seasonal weather conditions will have on growth and flowering periods. Here, to start you off, is their list of 10 plants that together should keep any keen gardener in a steady supply of cut flowers for much of the year

Cosmos  ‘Versailles’ (summer-flowering annual, spring sow)

Sweet William (annual/biennial, sow in late spring, early summer)

Verbena bonariensis (short-lived summer/autumn flowering perennial, spring sow)

Sweet pea (summer-flowering annual, sow seed autumn/ early spring)

Aster ‘Bridesmaid’ (tall, long-flowering annual, spring sow)

Lavatera trimestris ‘Beauty’ (annual, summer/autumn flowering, spring sow)

Antirrhinums (annual/short-lived perennial, summer-flowering , spring sow)

Rudbeckia ‘Marmalade’ (autumn flowering, spring sow)

Aquilegia ‘McKana Giants’ (spring-flowering perennial, sow seed late spring, early summer)

Daffodils/Narcissi (spring-flowering bulbs, plant in autumn)

From spring 2013, the Beatties will be giving courses on how to cultivate chemical-free cut flowers. For details see leitrimflowers.ie. Further information on cultivating cut flowers can be found in Sarah Raven's book Grow Your Own Cut Flowers.

This week in the garden

Sow seed of some perennials, including foxgloves, heleniums, delphiniums. Continue deadheading flowers. Sow spring cabbage.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

The first Clare Garden Festival, featuring Kitty Scully from RTÉ’s How to Create a Garden, plants man Ciaran Burke and Irish Seed Savers’ Jo Newton, will be held at the Co Clare Agricultural Show tomorrow from 1pm at Ennis showgrounds, Drumbiggle Road, Ennis

The annual Carlow Garden Festival kicks off today and continues until August 5th. See carlowgardentrail.comfor details