> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.indiefarmer.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# From London to flower farming: growing a new life at Dusky Slug Flowers
- URL: https://www.indiefarmer.com/from-london-to-flower-farming-growing-a-new-life-at-dusky-slug-flowers/
- Published: 2026-08-23T13:38:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-23T13:38:22.000Z
- Author: Nigel Akehurst
- Tags: #watch, Watch

In the eleventh instalment of my twelve-part Indie Farmer series, supported by the Lund Trust and the High Weald National Landscape, I visited Dusky Slug Flowers, in the High Weald National Landscape, near Staplecross, East Sussex, where first-generation flower farmer Poppy Royds is building a small-scale cut flower business inspired by seasonality, biodiversity and a growing demand for locally grown British flowers.

When I arrive at Dusky Slug Flowers on a warm August evening, Poppy is harvesting armfuls of queen lime zinnias.

The beds are bursting with colour: oranges, yellows, dusky pinks and acid greens, alongside dahlias, cosmos, marigolds and grasses. After an exceptionally dry summer, some crops have struggled, but the zinnias have thrived.

“They love the drought and the sun,” Poppy tells me. “So they’re one of the best flowers I have at the moment.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08374.JPG)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08377.JPG)

It is hard to believe that not long ago this was simply a mown field.

This is Poppy’s first full season growing flowers here, on roughly an acre of her parents’ land in Staplecross, East Sussex. She has created no-dig beds, installed irrigation and fencing, put up a polytunnel and begun turning what was essentially a blank canvas into a small commercial flower farm.

And until only a few years ago, becoming a farmer wasn’t necessarily where she thought her career was heading.

### Discovering flower farming

Poppy had lived in London since she was 17 and worked in food, marketing and PR. It was while working for a produce wholesaler sourcing from small farms and selling to chefs that the idea of growing flowers began to take shape.

A marketing campaign Poppy ran around seasonality called *Radiccio not Roses*, brought her into contact with florists and revealed a world of small-scale seasonal flower growers.

“The whole seasonal flower farming world was opened up for me through that,” she explains.

Around the same time, her parents decided to leave London themselves. Poppy’s mother comes from a farming background and wanted somewhere with a little land. Their move to Sussex coincided almost perfectly with Poppy’s own desire to escape the city.

“I’d sort of had enough of city life,” she says. “They very kindly let me work on about an acre.”

But rather than immediately starting her own business, Poppy decided she needed practical experience.

After leaving her London job, she travelled to Tasmania and spent around four months working on several farms she had connected with through work and Instagram.

“I don’t think I’m very studious,” she laughs. “I think it’s much better to just learn whilst working.”

That experience proved invaluable. Working alongside established growers allowed her to understand not just how to sow and harvest flowers, but the rhythms of running a small farm.

Her advice to anyone considering following a similar route is simple: go and work for somebody else first.

“Work for months, work for a whole year if you can, so you can see all the seasons and all the growing stages,” she says.

Just as importantly, those placements gave her a network of experienced growers she can still turn to when something goes wrong.

### Starting from scratch

Back in Sussex, the plot offered almost no existing infrastructure.

“It was totally virgin ground,” says Poppy. “It had just been mown.”

She opted for a no-dig system, covering the existing vegetation before building beds with a thick layer of compost.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DJI_20260805201122_0452_D.JPG)

The approach has worked particularly well during this year’s dry conditions. The compost has helped retain moisture, reducing irrigation requirements, while weed pressure during the first season has been remarkably low.

“It’s kept all that moisture in and everything seems to be growing really beautifully,” she says. “There are a lot of worms. I haven’t had any issues.”

Poppy is careful not to draw too many conclusions from a single season. Next year will bring self-seeded weeds and undoubtedly a new set of problems, but for now the system appears to be working.

Establishing the farm has required investment. Poppy had some savings and also received money from her grandmother, which allowed her to develop the business faster than she had originally planned.

Without it, she says, she would have started much more slowly, perhaps without the polytunnel, fencing or such large quantities of compost.

That doesn’t mean flower farming necessarily requires huge amounts of capital.

“You can start on £5,000,” she says. “You can do it off nothing and do your own watering, not have a polytunnel, have everything outdoors.”

Seeds can be relatively inexpensive, although costs quickly rise when growers move into unusual varieties, perennials, foliage plants and infrastructure.

As with so many new entrants to agriculture, Poppy believes the biggest hurdle is access to land.

“If you have access to land, you can probably start pretty cheap.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08365.JPG)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08369.JPG)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08382-copy.JPG)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08372.JPG)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08356.JPG)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DSC08364.JPG)

### Can an acre of flowers make money?

One of the most interesting things about visiting small-scale growers through this fellowship has been exploring what can be produced from relatively small areas.

Flowers are particularly striking in this respect.

“I don’t really want to be massive,” says Poppy. “Growing even an acre of flowers, you can produce so many.”

Plants can be grown tightly together, while individual plants can produce multiple saleable stems over a season.

Her customers are mainly florists and shops in Hastings, alongside buyers in London.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/50/da/50da6983-f19c-4a8d-b0d8-40d0b69cdad3/content/images/2026/08/DJI_20260805201010_0447_D.JPG)

Hastings has proved particularly supportive.

“The local florists have been really wonderful,” she says, although building those relationships takes time. “You have to gain their trust.”

London offers a much larger market, but the economics are different when every delivery involves a roughly hour-and-a-half drive. A trip only makes sense when there are enough orders to fill the van.

Poppy can see opportunities to add other income streams in future, from floristry and workshops to events on the farm.

That diversification may be important because British flower production remains highly seasonal. Flowers can begin in March with early bulbs and continue into autumn — Poppy hopes her late chrysanthemums will take her into October or November — but a significant proportion of the year’s income has to be earned within a relatively short growing season.

### The rise of British flowers

Poppy believes the opportunity extends beyond the economics of an individual farm.

She sees parallels between what has happened in food over the past decade and what could now happen with flowers.

“I think, like the local food movement, the next thing to happen is the local flower movement.”

Consumers, she argues, are increasingly interested in where their flowers come from and how they have been grown.

Most conventional cut flowers sold in Britain travel through international supply chains, with varieties selected partly for characteristics such as uniformity, straight stems and the ability to withstand transport.

Local growers can offer something quite different: scent, unusual shapes, delicate varieties and the slightly imperfect forms that might never survive an international journey.

For florists, those differences can become a selling point.

Poppy is particularly interested in perennials, which return each year and can produce varieties quite different from the annual flowers shoppers are accustomed to seeing.

“They’re a bit more earthy,” she says. “People are actually quite drawn to them because it’s what you see in nature around you in England.”

### Farming with nature

That connection with nature runs through the philosophy behind Dusky Slug Flowers.

Poppy doesn't use herbicides or pesticides and wants the farm to become a productive space that also creates habitat.

A pond is planned to encourage amphibians, while future planting will include trees and foliage. The flower beds themselves are already alive with insects.

“The amount of different types of bees, especially, is astounding,” she says. Butterflies have also been abundant during the warm summer.

Poppy talks enthusiastically about worms beneath the beds and birds arriving in the mornings to feed on insects.

“I just want to create pockets of life that will support different habitats,” she says. “All of the farm is about building a habitat that is for nature just as much as it’s for people.”

Even the farm's unusual name reflects that philosophy.

The dusky slug is a native species that Poppy says feeds largely on decaying plant material rather than living plants, helping break down organic matter.

It seemed an appropriate mascot for a business interested in the less glamorous creatures living alongside the flowers.

“Slugs can be fun,” she laughs. “And people are going to remember that name.”

### More than picking flowers

Spend an evening walking around an acre of colourful flowers and it would be easy to romanticise the lifestyle.

Poppy is quick to dispel that idea.

The biggest misconception about flower farming, she says, is that it involves wandering outside each morning and happily picking bouquets.

There is certainly plenty of harvesting, but there is also sowing, propagation, irrigation, deadheading, marketing, sales, packing and hours spent driving deliveries.

During August, Poppy's days are dominated by harvesting in the mornings before loading the van and delivering to Hastings or London. At the same time, she is responsible for finding customers and marketing the business.

Flowers also create a particularly unforgiving form of inventory.

If a crop reaches its peak and there isn't a customer waiting, its value can disappear remarkably quickly.

“It's like running any small business,” she says. “You're trying to sell them. You're trying to PR yourself. You're delivering.”

Her conclusion is wonderfully straightforward:

“It's not just girlies having a nice time growing a few flowers. It's proper business.”

### Leaving London behind

For all the challenges, Poppy has little doubt about the decision she made.

When I ask whether she misses her former London life, the answer is immediate.

“No. No, not at all.”

She still travels into London regularly and can see friends, but no longer feels trapped in the routine of commuting, networking and long working days.

“I felt like when I was living in London, I was just out networking and PRing and working from seven till seven and didn't really have space to breathe.”

Farming is hardly an easy alternative. Harvesting often means starting very early and the business can dictate when she works.

But the difference is autonomy.

“I can work late at night if I want to, or really early in the morning,” she says. “I can have a break when I'm tired. It just is a bit more freeing in that sense.”

There is another element to Poppy's story that feels significant too.

She was drawn towards flowers partly because she could see other women successfully building businesses on their own.

“There are just so many really amazing, strong women that I could see myself being,” she says. “I was like, okay, they're doing it. I can do it.”

That community continues to provide inspiration, practical knowledge and support.

For now, Poppy isn't interested in building an enormous operation. She may eventually employ people to help with harvesting, partly because farming alone can sometimes be lonely, but she questions the assumption that every successful business needs to keep getting bigger.

It is a recurring theme in small-scale farming: whether increasing turnover through more land, staff and infrastructure necessarily leaves the farmer any better off.

Sometimes, as Poppy puts it, “there's not a benefit scaling up.”

As the evening light begins to fade across the flower beds, that feels like an appropriate thought to end on.

Dusky Slug Flowers is still at the very beginning of its story. Poppy is learning which varieties thrive, building relationships with florists and working out what kind of business she wants the farm to become.

But in just one season, a previously unremarkable patch of grass has been transformed into a productive acre buzzing with pollinators and producing thousands of stems.

And perhaps most importantly, Poppy appears to have found the thing she was looking for when she left London: not an easier life, but one she has much more freedom to shape for herself.