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Weekend Magazine 6th March 2004
MY LIFE IF A BED OF ROSES
When Danaë Brook started her rose farm, she had no idea if it would succeed. Now, four years later, her thriving business supplies blooms to society weddings, film sets and celebrities
Four years ago my husband, Robin, and looked at our small paddock near our house in East Anglia and wondered what to do with it. Ponies? (Too much hard work.) Livery stables? (We ride, but don’t know enough about looking after horses.) Mushrooms? (My in-laws had already done that as a business and found it was not financially viable.) Then I remembered how my late mother-in-law had grown roses to stunning effect in her small formal garden and how, when friends came to stay, they would stagger home under the fragrant weight of her offerings for their London houses.
So why not grow roses commercially in our paddock? After all, we had a perfect microclimate for them: not too hot, not too cold, a south-facing site, good, light clay and loam sold and nearby we had Cants of Colchester, a well-known purveyor of healthy rose bushes who could (and did) help us enormously. Even better, the land was chemical free and we could do something that might help local wildlife and encourage alternative farming.
We have come a long way since. This month, on ITV’s This Morning, you can see a series of films about me and roses – how I plant, prune, cut, cook with them, make pot pourri and arrange them. I have been a journalist and author most of my life, so this seems a huge departure for me. But somehow I have managed to achieve the best of both worlds, and am now working on a TV documentary and a book called ‘A Passion for Roses’ to accompany it.
Robin and I had no idea if there would be a business in roses, but were prepared to investigate. He is an art market analyst, but trained as a financier, so we knew he could manage the accounts – and he helps wit the growing and picking in our now thriving business.
As a child, my aunt had passed on to me much of what she knew about gardening, particularly roses, and I quickly picked up the rest from books and by talking endlessly to rosarians, such as Michael Marriot, the technical director at the David Austin rose company. I also learnt a lot about the practicalities from Roger Pawsey, who is joint managing director of the family business Cants, from where we buy our roses. Cants’ rose fields, just outside Colchester, are only three miles from our house.
Through this painstaking process, I discovered enough for us too produce a rich and extraordinary first harvest. We only planted 500 rose bushes (we now have many thousands and employ two permanent part-time gardeners), but suddenly there was a rainbow of scent and colour at our fingertips. I had heard the best time to pick was early morning, just as the sun comes up. So I flew down to the rose patch, gathered up armfuls of flowers, and took them in a bucket with me up to London, where I was heading to my office in Kensington. En route, I took them to the flower shop Wild at Heart, in Notting Hill. Charlotte Seddon, the head florist, took on look at them, said ‘Yes, please’ and bought the lot. I was so excited I failed to realise I had accepted what would turn out to be a totally unrealistic price for them!
Wild at Heart continue to take our roses, while Paula Pryke – florist to the stars, who is also a local Suffolk girl, is a regular client. We supply a host of other florists and events, from fancy Scottish weddings (sometimes sending between 2,000 to 3,000 roses) to small country ceremonies. It is fun to let people come to the rose fields and see exactly what they want and choose their own colours: sometimes I help put together a bride’s bouquet, or garlands for the bridesmaids.
Being able to add a huge box or basketful of rose-petal confetti to the order is another delight. It is so much more beautiful and ecological than anything else (vicars love petals as they biodegradable and don’t mess up their churchyards), and petals scattered on white linen tablecloths just add to the sumptuous look and smell of the day. We’ve also provided roses for film sets, such at the BBC’s new costume drama, H Knew He Was Right, an Anthony Trollope adaptation by Andrew Davies and starring Bill Nighy, starting later this month, and Neverland, with Johnny Depp.
They have been used abundantly at smart London summer parties and once we were asked, at the last moment, for a huge bouquet for the shoe shop Gina, because Victoria Beckham was coming to buy shoes and she adores roses. We were also asked to send a huge box of mixed Indian colours – bright magenta, citrus yellow and orange confetti petals and roses – to a secret location, as a sensual anniversary gesture from one very famous woman to her pop star husband.
Georgie Bailey, who does the flowers for London clubs such as Annabel’s, particularly likes one of my favourites: Gertrude Jekyll, a deep fragrant, pink, old-fashioned rose, which mixes stunningly with the reds of Isabella or L D Braithwaite. Naturally, you have to choose the right flower for the situation. In a dark and airless room, the more delicate blooms, like Heritage, do not last. You need something tougher, such as the modern roses that look old-fashioned – Big Purple, a sumptuous, rich long-stemmed rose, which lasts well, or Just Joey, a velvety deep apricot, or Princess Alexandra, which combines best features of old and new, or Penny Lane, one of the prettiest creamy sprays.
Sometimes, of course, there are disasters. The first time we sent old-fashioned roses to a film set, no one had taken into account the heat from the lights so, inevitably, the first bowls, sitting so elegantly on their Victorian table tops, wilted. Second time round, they were delivered at the last moment, put into iced water, and kept in a refrigerated room overnight, and that worked perfectly.
The crucial thing is to make sure that when the blooms arrive, they have a long, cold drink of water, maybe eight to 12 hours before an event – then you can add either a little sugar or a pinch of bicarbonate of soda into the water to help perk them up. You’ll find this treatment will revive the most jaded plants.
Roses have been prized for thousands of years for their healing, soothing properties. We know that Cleopatra bathed with rose petals strewn in her bath, and slept on rose-petal pillows: in the dry, dusty desert conditions, they were used to calm the eyes and skin. You can easily make rose water for yourself, as I do at home. Just take two handfuls of petals (make sure they have not been chemically treated), add them to a litre of mineral water and bring to the boil for a moment. You can keep it in the fridge for up to three days and use it for culinary purposes or as a mildly astringent toner to soothe your complexion.