Language of Flower - Dream Maker

Penhaligon’s were lucky enough to take a stroll through the Electric Daisy Flower Farm with the delightful Fiona Haser Bizony. She was so kind as to share her passion for the farm and its ethos with us. This is what the esteemed dreamer had to say.

Fiona, what a pleasure it is to meet you. Could you tell us about the Electric Daisy Flower Farm you
have here?​

My son was a chef, and whilst he was working at the Epicurean they were growing a plant called the Electric Daisy. At that time, I was thinking of a name for my business – I couldn’t come up with it – and he came home with this Electric Daisy that you could eat. It was so stunning and shocking that I thought that it was such a cool name for our business.

I’ve been an artist and an artistic director most of my life, but I needed a change of direction. So I took myself off on ‘gardening leave’, I call it, and rebooted and decided what I wanted to do next. I did an RHS Horticulture course and I started growing flowers. That’s when I realised that was it, I wanted to grow flowers!​

So Electric Daisy Flower Farm was born, and I didn’t want to just grow little bits of flowers, I was very ambitious, and I wanted to grow loads of flowers. All of the flowers, in fact. We finally found a home in Somerset, a piece of land, and it’s two and a half acres and we’ve covered it in organic flowers. We grow them from seed, some are in a polytunnel, but most are planted in the field. There’s rows and rows of flowers. We stagger the flowers so that they come through the season, so that there’s always something of interest. We’ve opened a shop in London, so our flowers get shipped from Somerset up to the shop in London.

What is your ethos here at the Electric Daisy Flower Farm, from the growing of the plants, all the way to creating the lovely bouquets and crowns that Penhaligon’s are so very fascinated with?​

I’ve always eaten organic food, since my early twenties I was very interested in ecology, sustainability and that kind of thing. So, I was very, very green. Finally Electric Daisy feels like it’s me coming home to all of the things that I really believe in. I grow organic flowers in a way so that there’s always something on the farm to ensure that it’s always extremely biodiverse here. We’re not an industrial monoculture. We grow a huge variety of different flowers, so there’s always food for insects and foraging beetles and things. It’s really important to me that we’re not just doing it because we want to grow one flower, we’re growing an array of different flowers through
the seasons. ​

We also grow vegetables here, so when we’re working together, we all eat together, and that’s part of the ethos here as well. It’s like being in a family. If you’re working really hard to grow these beautiful flowers then it’s really nice that we share it, we make it together, and in the shop we’ll all eat together as well. We take the vegetables with the flowers up to the shop and they all eat together there too. 

Allow Penhaligon’s to acquaint you with the chosen floral scents of the Language of Flowers campaign. Each one speaks a hidden message, it’s time to enlighten yourself…