Stay inspired

A farm nestled in the heart of a Dorset village, just upstream from the Abbotsbury swannery – reputedly the only place in the world where you can hang with a colony of nesting mute swans. The flower fields are just as fetching as those flocks, painted in the pinks, purples, blues and yellows of foxgloves, alliums and love-in-a-mist. There’s a monthly pick-your-own flower club, £30 a session, which includes a tour of the growing beds, a vaseful of your chosen blooms and a good serving of coffee and cake. For £50, there’s also a helpful PYO wedding flowers option. Open from Thursday to Tuesday.

Rowes, Priory Gardens, Bow Street, Guisborough

Tucked into the northern border of the North York Moors National Park, this market garden is overseen by third-generation growers in the shadow of Gisborough Priory. They’ve been running PYO events since 2018, with available sessions (Mondays, Wednesdays and weekends) all listed on the website, so make sure to book online. New this April was the option to pick all tulips. Come August, you can delight in the spread of cottage flowers and late summer dahlias. The cost is £14 for 15 individual flowers and you’re delightfully cautioned that proceedings will be muddy, so wear boots. Rowes also runs floristry services and bridal workshops for green-fingered DIYers.

Howe Farm Flowers, Dorton , Buckinghamshire 

Pick-your-own sessions start on 20 June in this beautifully floral corner of Buckinghamshire. You can opt for a simple bucketful (£25 for an hour), a flowers and tea for two session  in the greenhouse garden (£65 for two hours), or a full-on flower morning (£80 for three hours), which promises to send you home sated, with an armful of your favourite stems. Recent floral highlights have included irises (Dutch and bearded), sweet Williams and ruby red peonies. Open every Thursday, Friday and Saturday up to September – pre-booking on the website is a must. Other activities the farm puts on include vase making workshops and yoga and flowers retreats.

Vale Pick Your Own, Greenland Farm, Bonvilston, Vale of Glamorgan

Cardiff’s best kept secret. This flower field, which runs up a hill towards lush woodland, opened in 2023 on a farm that also does berries in the summer and pumpkins, come autumn time. Poppies red and orange rub shoulders with marigolds, cosmos and cornflowers in a sea of floral colour. Last year’s prices for entry to the field were £5 per adult and £3 for children (aged 10 and under), with flowers costing £8 a bunch. You can picnic in the blooms, at benches and pallet sofas, with goodies bought from the cafe. The 2024 season starts this month – check the farm’s socials for their opening day announcement.

Southwold Flower Company, Southwold, Suffolk

Four acres of flowers just a short drive inland from Southwold Pier on the Suffolk coast. This year’s PYO season launched with a cream tea for parents and face painting and muddy puddle jumping for kids. It’s open seven days a week until mid-October. Prices range from £50 for a florist’s bucketful, to £6.50 for a child-friendly jam jar. There’s a flower bar too, where you can pick and mix bouquets of the week’s best blooms – the lady’s mantel and valerian are particularly beautiful right now – to combine in bouquets. There is also the option to do a terrarium workshop (no booking required) or join the monthly flower club. Dogs are welcome.

The Flowered Garden, Park Farm, Felbridge, West Sussex

This West Sussex haven is a flower farm and floristry studio just outside of East Grinstead. Owner Narayanee Rawner places a big emphasis on sustainable and environmentally-friendly growing and supplies flowers for weddings, funerals, florists and more. The PYO field is open from the end of June, on Fridays and Saturdays and access is priced at £40 for one bucket, £75 for two or £110 for three. There are only two 1.5 hour slots a day and they book up quickly, so be sure to make a reservation.

Tomnah’a Market Garden, Comrie Croft, Braincroft, Crieff 

One of the only flower farms in Scotland – possibly even in the UK – where you can pick, not just from a standalone area, but the whole garden. There are three distinct growing area: the polytunnels, the flower field with its long beds of small crops and the test garden, with a variety of interesting plants, from dreamy dahlias to ornamental grasses and scented foliage. The PYO season runs on Saturdays and Mondays from July to October: £35 per person per bucket, for two hours. And you can definitely make a day of it, too. There’s a tea garden nearby, as well as mountain biking, a sauna, a farm shop and more – just an hour from both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Pythouse Kitchen Garden, Tisbury, Wiltshire

A walled garden straight out of a storybook. The venue is listed in the Michelin Guide for its restaurant. But the menu, which serves such delights as blackcurrant leaf parfait and flamingo pea whip, makes clear that the garden is the main character. There, you can glamp, romp, shop, wed and – for £15 – you can take it home too, one bucketful at a time. The pick-your-own cutting beds are abuzz with dahlias, cosmos, delphinium and candytuft, globe thistles on thin stalks and sweet peas just asking to be plucked into posies. Typically open until November.

Dale Berning Sawa

Gardens

Pursuits

With early summer upon us, Britain’s borders are in full bloom. For those who don’t have the pleasure – or the upkeep – of their own cutting garden, we have selected eight fragrant pick-your-own flower farms across the country. Spend an hour in one their well-tended beds and gather yourself a bucketful of impressionistic blooms

A Polite Request

Pick of the Bunch: Britain’s best pick-your-own flower farms