To celebrate this year's Flower Farmers Big Weekend, why don't you Pick your own bunches in a beautiful location?

Abbey Farm Flowers is nestled in Abbotsbury is open and welcoming people to its peaceful patch with a colourful array of flowers.

Set up by Amy Ralph and Emma Hughes earlier this year, the site has bloomed in a short time and pickers can fill a vase with sunflowers, dahlias, snapdragons and more from the two fields in the heart of the abbey ruins.

The idea was started by Amy, who had been growing flowers to sell at Axminster Country Market.

"Because of lockdown that closed, but I had a garden full of flowers and nowhere to sell them," Amy said. "So, I contacted Teresa at House of Flowers in Lyme Regis and asked if she wanted any flowers and because of lockdown, all her imports from Holland and everywhere had stopped, so she was desperate. I started selling to her and I really enjoyed it.

"I was looking for more space and this came up. It was too lovely not to open to the public it's a shame to just grown things here and sell them elsewhere.

"Half way through the process, I thought this was going to be too much for me, so I persuaded Emma to join me."

As well as the opportunity for visitors to pick their own, they also offer refreshments, an ever-growing collection of dried and pressed flowers, as well as locally made gifts.

Amy added: "At the moment we're learning what people like and what they don't like, but plans for the future would be more events, workshops, courses, that sort of thing, and we would like to get more collaborations going. There's a little meditation centre that has opened in the village, they do a lot of end of life work and they are coming to pick flowers as part of one of their events.

"We have also done a wedding, which was slightly out of the blue, so we could potentially do more weddings and things like that. What we'd like is people to come and do their own weddings, so come and pick a pick your own bucket - it's a lovely thing for brides and bridesmaids to do."

The pair are also making plans for the winter, as well as ordering speciality bulbs for the spring. They will be offering wreath making and have been busy drying flowers as they go along, which will also be available.

"We just want people to come and experience what we get to experience every day because it's such a lovely place to be.

"We've had lovely feedback, some really nice comments from people and, although we haven't aimed it at children, we've aimed it at adults, but we've had some children through and they've been very slow, careful and interested.

"There's more interest in British flowers now, there's quite a big movement. I think now people have got into local fruit and veg and local meat, yet they're still buying their roses from Kenya and their chrysanthemum's from Mexico, but they're cottoning on."

Abbey Farm Flowers can be found in Abbotsbury's Church Street and parking is available in the village's car park.

For more information, visit abbeyfarmflowers.co.uk

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