This Family’s Enchanting Micro-Flower Farm Holds More Than 2000 Dahlias!
Gardens
Fluers de Lyonville is run by Janae and Chris Paquin-Bowden.
The couple have planted more than 2000 dahlias in their micro-flower farm!
The husband-and-wife duo are teachers turned flower farmers who are passionate about sustainability.
Daucus carota (Queen Anne’s lace)
The romantic landscape is filled with cottage-style flowers.
Janae’s dad, Ian Evans worked also helped with the landscape design.
The garden is laid out in patches around the property.
The beautiful peachy petals of dahlia ‘Great Hercules’.
Cosmos bipinnatus (white cosmos).
They now supply flowers throughout Daylesford and the Macedon Ranges at local stockists, private events and subscriptions.
A pathway leads back to the family’s home.
Floret Flower Farm in the USA and Georgie Newbury from the UK were a huge inspiration for the flower farmers.
The owners established the property from when it was just a bare paddock!
‘We grow a lot of what are called :hardy annuals”, which are annuals that you can plant in autumn, so they flower in spring and early summer to extend our season.’
Echinops ritro (southern globethistle) provides pops of purple.
The family’s brick house.
Fluers de Lyonville founders Janae and Chris Paquin-Bowden with their two kids, Gigi and Atticus.
Their potager garden provides them with fresh produce all year round.
Inside their home.
‘We went for a somewhat traditional, formal design with several beds so we could rotate crops when necessary and always have room to start planning and planting for the next season.’
The charming vintage kitchen.
Janae is also a ceramicist!
The bathroom reveals checkerboard floors.
They also host garden tours and workshops throughout the year.
Janae Paquin-Bowden says her journey to becoming a flower farmer all started on her first date with her now husband Chris.
‘We bonded over our love of River Cottage,’ she says, referring to the British TV series where celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall established a 100-acre farm by the same name.
The couple both had a dream of owning a small landholding where they could create their own version of this: a beautiful, self-sufficient and productive block. Then in 2013, they bought an eight-acre property in Lyonville, located in the heart of the Macedon Ranges.
‘It was just a paddock with a fence, an electricity box, and a dam with large pine trees along the front fence,’ Janae says.
But it wasn’t until a few years later when Janae was on maternity leave from her job teaching French that the vision for Fleurs de Lyonville really began taking shape.
While at home with the couple’s children, she started growing more and more flowers in patches around their house, wherever she could reach while still keeping an eye on her little ones.
They started selling them at local markets to huge demand, and before long, Chris left his assistant principal job to work together on what has since become a thriving micro-flower farm business.
While the garden was planted very organically out of necessity at the time, its sprawling areas have made the experience of touring the garden more exciting, as visitors wander through the garden beds. Plus, it’s also been advantageous to help create a ‘balanced’ ecosystem with less pests and more birdlife. The rest was born out of passion and plenty of trial and error.
‘Neither of us had any formal training, and didn’t grow up in this region, so at first, we really didn’t know what plants survive in this climate,’ Janae adds.
A sea of organically grown flowers now makes up about two acres of their landscape, featuring with cottage-blooms, hardy-annuals and any natives that can handle the region’s frosty weather. The couple have a particular penchant for dahlias, with more than 2000 planted.
‘We would have around 60-70 different varieties at the moment at least, and although every year we try not to buy any more new varieties — we can’t help it!’
A potager garden rounds out the family’s enchanting property, where the couple and their kid’s enjoy growing their own supply of fruit and vegetables all year around.
‘I love seeing the veggies coming on and it’s right outside the main passage of the house, so as we come and go, we get to see what we can pick for dinner that night. It is so simple, but going out and picking herbs for dinner is such a satisfying ritual,’ she adds.
In addition to supplying their beautiful blooms throughout the region September all the way to May, Fleurs de Lyonville offers flower farm tours and workshops, including a dahlia masterclass coming up in August.