Peony Season
In May we’ll be flat out harvesting peony roses from our 16,000 plant orchard. The first variety is always the cerise Flame. We have experimented by planting peony in one of our tunnels for the first time to see if we can get earlier production at the start of the season, but Darragh reckons it’ll be a year before he can see what the tunnels can actually achieve. It’ll also give us a chance to develop a wider variety of colours, scents and sizes in our peony range.
The next variety is a real stunner called Alertie, which not only comes in a beautiful baby pink, but also has a wonderful delicate scent.
Then the old reliable Sarah Bernhardt comes into the mix. Despite being one of the oldest peony varieties bred back in 1906, it remains the dominant variety in the species, with it’s hardy growth habit and gorgeous pink frills.
Our latest flowering variety is another pink called Jacorma, which usually wraps up harvesting around mid June.
Kao Thai
Following Pesto Kitchen’s wildly successful pizzas that have taken the area by storm, we are introducing another food option at Elmgrove Flower Farm. Kao Thai is run by local woman Arisa, and we’re looking forward to broadening our diet beyond Csaba’s lovely dough!
A Growing Team
Valentines Day is the one day of the year when the gender profile of our customers turns on its head! The neighbours thought we had started building again with the number of vans belonging to tradesmen that were jammed into the car-park at the shop all day! Our poor florists were beat by the end, but that’s the joys of the gig.
However, the unprecedented demand for our offering prompted Darragh to look at adding new members to the ever-expanding team at Elmgrove Flower Farm. Say hello to Aisling and Daisy who joins us with a wealth of experience at both floristry and event planning…something that we’re going to be exploring in earnest as we look to do more wedding and event work.
Our Range
Shop managers Ruth and Egle were off at the Craft Fair in the RDS when they spotted some wonderful dried flower art. Never ones to miss an opportunity, Kirsten from Studio Eight up in Cavan was signed up to supply her wonderful Irish wildflower creations for Elmgrove Farm Shop’s ever increasing gift range.
Our mixed breed free-range eggs have been selling out since the beginning of the year, so we booked more hens to double the size of the flock to 100 hens. There are about 6 different breeds, including Flecked Legbars, Black Copper Marans, and the more standard Loman Browns. The latter lay your common light brown coloured egg, while the Marans have a deep caramel coloured egg, with the Legbars laying light green ones.
We also buddied up with local dairy farmers Brian and Cency McLeer to stock their wonderful non-homogenised milk from their farm just north of Drogheda. While it’s true that Elmgrove Farm has an existing dairy partnership with their neighbours, providing pasteurised milk 365 days a year is something that isn’t on the agenda at home…just yet!
Our nascent garden centre is gradually increasing it’s range and scope under the watchful eye of resident horticulturalist, Pauline McNally. The next two months is when gardeners go bananas in their little slices of paradise, and we reckon we’ve got something for everyone.
Open Days
We opened up our flower fields to more people than ever before in 2024…and they loved it! Over 2,000 people came in their droves from all over the country to experience firsthand what Ireland’s largest flower farm really feels like. Whether it was a chance to get a ride behind the tractor up through the farm, hunt for Easter eggs, pose in our Insta doorway, or just breath in the awesome sight of millions of daffodils in full bloom, people couldn’t get enough of our open days, with tickets selling out every time.
Farmer Darragh dedicated his week leading up to Daffodil Day to hosting schools, special needs units and gardening clubs on tours of the fields. All the proceeds went to the Irish Cancer Society, and we’re proud to report that close to €5,000 was raised from this alone. We are looking forward to doing the same on a bigger scale in 2025!
In addition, we supplied hundreds of Daffodil Day volunteers with fresh daffies from our fields. We are able to deliver these nationwide through our courier service, and are delighted to supply these hardy men, women and students with flowers at cost for such a good cause.
Behind the scenes, we were picking our heads off, harvesting close to 12 million stems of daffodils for sale all over the world. This is the cornerstone of our business for the last 20 years, and we’re glad to report that demand for our stems is growing all the time.
After an early start to the growing season, the wet has forced a lot of sowing very late. But we’re still hopeful of getting our first corn maize plantation sown to host a Maze in the Maize later in the autumn. We think the two acre plot will be a great addition to the pumpkin hunt in among the Christmas trees that worked so well last October. Fingers crossed!
Meanwhile, whenever the fields do eventually dry up, we’ve also got 20,000 sunflowers to sow, along with a host of other floral loveliness. We’ll see how the season goes, but these might provide other pick-your-own opportunities later in the year.
Sustainability
Wouldn’t it be great if all the energy required to make teas and coffees at our Coffee Cart was renewable? Consider it done! We’ve installed nearly €20,000 of solar panels on the roof of the shop which more than cover our power requirements for not just the Coffee Cart, but also the fridge, PCs and everything else electrical in the shop.
It’s part of a bigger commitment to solar PV on the rest of the farm buildings, where nearly 160kW of panels have now been installed. Not only will these cover much of the power requirement for the entire farm during the summer months, there will also be a surplus available to export back to the national grid.