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Farmer Stories

Roisin Taylor - How flowers can boost biodiversity and income

England
Case Study
agroecology
biodiversity
climate change
climate action
direct selling
Diversification
Farming Champions
soil health

Flowers may be seen as a niche part of nature-friendly farming, but Roisin Taylor is determined to show they can be grown successfully within a range of sustainable farming systems. She also sees real potential for collaboration, with farmers and growers working together to diversify incomes and share the benefits.

Cut flowers currently represent only a small part of British agriculture, especially when compared to major sectors like livestock and arable farming. But Roisin Taylor is keen to demonstrate how flower growing can sit comfortably within nature-friendly farming systems. She combines her love of horticulture with in-depth research into how well British farming is prepared for a warming world shaped by the climate crisis.

Raised in Weardale, County Durham, Roisin started working on a local farm as a teenager - starting out as a dog walker for the on-site kennels. It wasn’t long before she developed a passion for all kinds of outdoor work, from traditional skills such as dry stone walling to looking after pigs and sheep.

By the time she completed her studies at Cambridge University, her mum had also taken a leap - leaving her career as a writer to follow her own passion for growing by founding the Verde Flower Co, starting with a polytunnel on a former market garden in Hexham, Northumberland.

Roisin supported her mum’s business, while working at a farm and in a cafe. “I was helping her out as much as I could, but when I finished as an undergrad I actually wanted to be a dry stone waller,” she recalls. “I thought that was the best thing ever.”

The business has moved about half a dozen times. Renting land is incredibly difficult, especially if you’re not from a farming background.

Roisin Taylor

Her interests continued to evolve, leading her to pursue another Master’s degree. She then joined the RSPB, working on projects related to conservation and climate change.

It was the Covid-19 pandemic that ultimately prompted Roisin to fully embrace growing. She and her mum could socially distance in Verde’s walled garden, and it was there that things clicked. “I suddenly realised this was what I wanted to do,” Roisin says. However, working in horticulture didn’t mean leaving behind her wider interests. “I love growing, but I also enjoy telling the important stories around flower farming and how it intersects with issues like climate change.”

As tenants, one of Verde’s ongoing challenges has been land security. “The business has moved about half a dozen times,” Roisin says. “That tells you a lot about being a new entrant and the rental market, especially in North East England. Renting land is incredibly difficult, especially if you’re not from a farming background.” 

When her mum stepped back in 2023, Roisin took over running the business alone. She’s now in the process of re-establishing Verde at a 2.2 acre walled garden in Bellingham, Northumberland.

Wherever Verde finds a home, Roisin’s commitment to nature-friendly growing remains central - drawing on the same principles that underpin agroecology. Soil health is at the heart of her approach. “We learned different composting methods, made sure we were using peat-free compost, mulched with leaf litter, and paid attention to the weeds, interpreting their growth as a clue to soil conditions.”

“We are also completely chemical-free, and companion planting is really important for us. On artisan or small-scale flower farms, you often see planting in strips. We broke those strips into shorter sections, mixing crops to prevent disease spread and reduce pest pressure on the highest-value flowers. We also started experimenting with cover crops for overwintering.”

Every Verde site has also made space for nature, whether that is by creating dead hedges to support biodiversity or establishing and nurturing wildflower meadows. In just three years, the team transformed one neglected walled garden filled with disused farming machinery into a flourishing flower farm that hosted kestrels, voles, woodpeckers and bees, along with over 200 species of plants.  

Flowers can play a fantastic role on farms. They're a luxury crop with a strong earning potential, and the amount of biodiversity they attract, like birds and bees, is staggering.

Roisin Taylor

Roisin is now looking to integrate flower growing more widely into nature-friendly farming. She founded the British Cut Flower Association to raise the sector’s profile and also launched a land-matching service to connect aspiring growers with farmers and landowners looking to diversify. “Flowers can play a fantastic role on farms,” she says. “They’re a luxury crop with a strong earning potential, and the biodiversity they attract, like insects, bees and birds, can be staggering. I like the idea of small–scale growers working in partnership with farmers, sharing resources and benefits.”

Her interest in the future of flower growing also led her to undertake a Nuffield Scholarship, examining how prepared British horticulture is for a world that’s two degrees warmer - or more. Motivated by her own experience of increasingly extreme weather, including violent storms and a 38-degree heatwave, she travelled to New Zealand, Kenya, the Netherlands and across the UK to see how growers and farmers are adapting. What she found was sobering.

“As a sector, we are not prepared for the future - despite being on the front lines of climate change,” she says. “I learned that resilience is as much about people and communities as it is about techniques - whether that’s responding to cyclones in New Zealand or coexisting with lions, zebras and elephants in Kenya. Knowledge of the land, even born from hardship, enables people to adapt. It’s about looking forward as well as back. We can’t just cling to a romanticised past.”

For Roisin, rural communities must come together to develop local climate adaptation plans and consider how climate change will impact business viability. She also advocates for better access to high-quality data, collaborating with organisations such as the Met Office.

Her forward-looking perspective doesn’t end there. Roisin is involved with Ag Diversity, an initiative which seeks to open up farming careers to underrepresented communities, and she’s a co-director of UK Youth 4 Nature, campaigning on issues such as water quality and urban pesticide use.

During her time without a growing site, Roisin kept the business going by supplying flowers from other independent growers for weddings, funerals and other events. But her ambition for the new site is to re–establish production and supply florists as a wholesaler. She also hopes to boost awareness of the British cut flower sector among both farmers and the public.

“We’re at a real turning point for the sector,” she says. “There are lots of small-scale growers, but around 90% of the flowers sold in the UK are still imported. We need stronger, more resilient businesses so that growers can scale up and florists can actually get access to British flowers. Right now, the infrastructure simply isn’t there. We need a visible, coherent sector with a voice that consumers can recognise and support.”

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