There's quite a few plants around here
that are looking pretty woebegon
but that's OK, because that's what happens
when they're constantly harvested for the florist industry.
This is a flower farm.
I'm near Balhannah, just a half an hour east of Adelaide.
This property has 12 hectares of plants that are grown to be cut
for floral arrangements.
And there's quite a bit of variety.
Around 100 species.
About two thirds of the space has African members
of the Protea family.
And the other third is for Australian natives.
Ange and Des Kidman have been working this farm for 19 years
and grew potatoes in the Mallee before that.
On that farm just happened to be
a 60 acre block of Geraldton wax Wow!
..that was planted there in the 80's as a...trying to find other ventures
for the Mallee.
And so, yeah, we fell into flower growing by total accident
And then after six years of being there, we decided to get
a bit closer to Adelaide and found this farm and just had to have it.
These bunches are stunning.
What have you used?
Well, this is purely Australian. All of these species.
A mixture of eucalyptus, acacia, rice flower, tea tree.
Pretty gorgeous, hey?
And this one would last forever.
Everything would dry, as you see it
So that one's a great long living one.
This one here is a mixture of Protea...
So African Leucadendron, also African and Australian foliages
with a gorgeous little Australian itopoge in there.
They're great combinations.
Now, obviously, you and Des are a good combination
running this business. Yep.
How do you divide up who does what?
We fell into our roles.
So nothing was ever really planned.
It's just I seem to be able to remember the names of, well,
most of the things that we grow and Desi just seemed to love trading.
So he was the business side of the business
and I was the practical side, which was quite nice still, real yeah.
Time to take a look around the farm.
Proteas, Leucadendrons and leucospermums
are very much African plants,
but their similarity to Australian species
like waratahs and banksias is obvious.
Even though they're of African origin,
the florists bung them all into same category and call them natives.
And they're such amazing long lasters
because you can get several week them in a vase and then they dry
That's true. And the other thing we love about them
is just how visually textural and beautiful they are.
Would it be fair to say that the protea family
was the backbone of the business
Definitely been that.
But we are more and more experimenting
with Australian flora now
and especially getting into different foliages,
eucalyptus foliages, which we love.
With its cute round foliage, it's easy to see why
silver mountain gum is popular.
Ange and Des have gone for it in a big way.
We've got about a thousand. Wow!
With a couple of hundred to go in this year.
Now, if left to their own device these would become small trees.
And while these plants are small you've got some bigger ones as well.
Yeah, we do. These are young.
They're a couple of years old
and once they're at about two inches in diameter,
you can cut them back as hard as you like.
But we usually like to keep them max, at about six feet
so that you can pick them easily enough, yep.
And because they've got a lignotuber
that's designed to respond to fire,
they don't care about you hacking them.
They don't. They seem to love it
We also grow Eucalyptus crenulata, or Victorian silver gum.
It's a really beautiful one that has a peppery fragrance to it.
Lovely.
We love this because it's a eucalyptus
and that has an olive green colour,
which is a bit more unusual and a little tiny dainty leaf.
Next stop, Eucalyptus pleurocarpa.
This is a beautiful Mallee gum and we love this one, particularly,
because of the white nuts.
It's nutty and beautiful and ready for harvest
from February onwards.
And the florists love to use it with nuts on the tip,
but also it's quite gorgeous even just without the nuts on the tip.
Long vase life, once again. Yeah.
And it's a Mallee species and you're keeping them low for harvesting.
But there's a lesson in this for home gardeners, isn't there?
That's right. So you don't need a huge space to be able to have
one of these in your garden
because you can just keep pruning them back and they will shoot out
as a multi-trunked tree from the lignotuber.
And you can keep them as tall or as short as you like.
Ange also has natives with showy floral displays.
We used to grow lots of Geraldton wax, but we grow less now
because it's not suited to here.
But we do grow other beautiful small flowers like Agonis.
We love this because it's white, it flowers for many, many months
and it can tolerate being harvested back pretty hard every year.
And so how much would you cut it back?
About three quarters of a metre to a metre.
I mean, we're watering and fertilising these every year
so you have to give them some love.
But yes, they totally can handle that, as you can see.
These rice flowers are looking gorgeous.
Yeah, one of my favourite Aussie flowers.
The challenge with them is that they don't last, well,
probably beyond seven or eight years.
So they're one that we plan to replant always.
Industry standard is that you replace about 10% of your plantation
every year.
We've got 30 acres.
So it's about three acres of replanting.
So you can see what we're doing when we're not picking flowers.
(LAUGHS) Absolutely.
And the tea tree are beautiful too.
Yep, totally stunning.
And they are quite a hit.
And especially in spring, they go so well with all the spring flowers.
We also are growing kangaroo paw in red, orange and yellow.
And we've got some waratahs - also my favourites.
Changing tastes in floral displays has not only led to Ange and Des
changing what they grow.
It's had an effect on the way they do business.
Now, previously, you were exporting, but that's changed.
It has. So, recently we've seen a huge demand from the locals
to buy local product.
We've loved that.
And we also love the idea of the flowers not travelling
right around the country or even overseas
and just keeping them local means they're going to be fresher,
and it's a lot more sustainable product.
It wasn't that long ago that people would ring and asked if we grew
lilies and roses.
And when we said no, they would just hang up.
So, yeah, things have changed and...which is fantastic.
And now people are wanting native flowers, which is so brilliant.
And now they're taking pride of place in vases
all across the country.