Dawn Allen began as a Saturday girl in her local florist shop, met her husband at Covent Garden Flower Market, and now farms Australian natives from Bob's Garden — fifty acres at Boneo on the Mornington Peninsula, looking out to Bass Strait. In May, she took banksias to the Chelsea Flower Show with her exhibit Banksia Evolution, tracing the banksia from seed pod to full bloom, and came home with a silver-gilt.
In this episode, Dawn shares:
Starting out in a UK florist shop and how floristry kept pulling her back
Falling for wildflowers fifteen years ago, when King Proteas were three dollars a stem
Bob's Garden — the fifty-acre property at Boneo, the man it's named for, and letting his plants live out their lives in the ground
Why farm-grown, not flown, matters: freshness, chemicals, and supporting Victorian flower farms
Her love of the kinked, cockatoo-chewed, perfectly imperfect stem
Winning Spirit of the Show at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show
Applying for Chelsea — being number 11 out of 10 the first year, then getting the acceptance email just before Christmas
Designing Banksia Evolution: seed to plant to flower to full bloom, with steel tubing as the life force running through it
The growers who backed her, and 27 boxes of flowers arriving in London without one broken stem
Bump-in at Chelsea: the portal, the time slots, and why organisation is everything
Discovering the silver-gilt medal on her exhibit on judging morning
International florists asking "what are these, where can I get them?"
With thanks to the growers who made Chelsea happen:
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