From Bob's Garden to Chelsea — Dawn Allen, Peninsula Wildflower
About this episode
Dawn Allen shares her journey from a florist shop in the UK to winning a silver-gilt medal at the Chelsea Flower Show with her exhibit on banksias.
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…
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