You don’t need a big garden, hours of time or a floaty linen dress to be a flower grower
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can grow flowers.
If you have a windowsill with direct sunlight for a few hours a day, you can grow flowers.
If you have a balcony with 5 hours sunlight a day, you can grow lots of flowers.
If you have a garden, you can grow enough flowers to fill your house (and probably your friends’ houses too).
Many people are overwhelmed when they think about growing. It takes too much time. It’s too expensive. Creating a garden is a lot of physical work.
Growing flowers from seed - especially in pots - is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to start growing flowers.
Let’s review some of the hurdles you may have put between you and your dream of growing flowers.
I don’t have a green thumb (or a floaty dress)
No one is born ‘a gardener’. Even people who have been gardening for years still have plenty to learn. Growing flowers is a journey anyone can take - and like all journeys, it starts with the first step.
And there is no ‘one type’ of gardener. Have a snoop around Instagram to reset your image of ‘gardener’ - people growing on barges, rooftops, reclaimed front verges, and creating gardens planted entirely in recycled tin cans. People growing just for textile dyeing, or medicine. And so many beautiful home gardens from around the world growing just for the joy of growing (rather than to win a garden design award). Trust me, the floaty dress is not a requirement. Nor are the overalls. Or the boots, or whatever other aesthetic you think you need to embrace to start growing flowers.
Set up is hard
If you don’t know where to start, start with pots. Even if you have a garden, getting started in pots is the fastest way to get yourself set up to plant your first flowers. Last year, I did a Bunnings run and picked up everything I needed to plant Zinnia in 12 minutes. If you are a doubting Thomasina, see Instagram reel here.
It is too expensive
A packet of good quality seeds is less than $10, a bag of good potting mix under $20, and a HUGE terracotta pot at Bunnings is $25-$50.
It takes too long to plant
Dumping soil into a pot and whacking in some seeds takes under 3 minutes. Literally. Including struggling to cut open the potting mix bag.
Caring for flowers is too much work on top of my already busy life
I get it. I work a full-time job and have a busy life with all the usual demands and dramas of family, pets, and keeping my home liveable.
Once planted, watering your flowers every day takes less time than drinking a cup of coffee (or tea). And watering pots, seeing what is growing—and better still flowering—brings a moment of joy and pause in what might otherwise be a frantic and rewardless day. There is something about the noise of the garden hose, having to stand still long enough to get the water onto the plants, and witnessing the daily progress of flower growth that is grounding and deeply nourishing. For me, it feels like connecting to something ancient, as though for that moment of stillness I’m in touch with what it means to be human. Floaty dress optional.
Colourful Dahlia - all seed grown