This Life - Andrea Jones

Florists can’t get enough of the beautiful, natural fresh cut flowers that come from this one-acre farm in east Ayrshire. The grower, Andrea Jones, explains why local and seasonal is proving more than a match for exotic and expensive.

- Catherine Coyle

Back when Andrea Jones was a child growing up in Dumfries and Galloway, it was normal for her to come home from school and ‘do a line of digging’ before dinner or starting any homework. Her parents owned a smallholding, rearing cows and growing fruit and vegetables, so there was always a lot of manure to work into the soil, and the whole family helped out. “I learned how to look after the soil and how to grow things when I was very young,” she recalls. “We were totally self-sufficient in fruit and veg when I was growing up.”

She moved to the city as a young adult, but her longing for the rural life, fresh country air and wide-open spaces soon brought her to Ayrshire, where she and her partner and two teenage sons now live. Self-sufficiency and caring for the land is something she has passed on to her own children who, like her, were encouraged to take up a wheelbarrow and help out in the garden from an early age. But it is in her own life that it has had the biggest impact, as what started out as a hobby has now become a career. “I’m a trained speech and language therapist, but I split my week between my practice and my business, Mayfield Flowers, cultivating fresh cut flowers from my one-acre garden.”