Dahlia Beach Millets Farm pick your own
As you may have gathered from all the recent flower posts, I do love a flower field and pick your own. The latest I spotted this year is Dahlia Beach at Millets Farm, who have a pick your own dahlia field. Millets Farm is in Frilford, not far from Oxford.
I love dahlias, mainly because of their perfect structure on the ball dahlias. They make for really interesting macro photos. But I’ve never seen them growing, and decided to book for the first day of opening for the season.
I’ve not been to Millets Farm for years. It ended up being a more rushed visit than expected. I needed to get back to the bank for N before it closed, and a hair appointment. It all worked out in the end thankfully.
Dahlia Beach has been around since lockdown, and is now an award winning dahlia farm, and wholesaler. They sell the tubers and grow over 15,000 plants for cutting.
The dahlia field at Millets Farm opened mid August. They recommend buying tickets in advance, although people were buying on the day when I was there.
Visiting Dahlia Beach pick your own field
The field is easily found and well sign posted in the upcoming visit emails, and on arrival. There’s nearby parking that’s free, and it’s only a short walk to the field.
I was booked for the first slot of the day (and season). I was expecting just to queue for a bit as I and a couple of others were a bit early. Then we’d be let in. But it got to 10 and we had to wait for some stragglers and extras who’d not paid in advance. Then got a briefing about the flowers and how the pick your own worked. This was interesting and helpful if like me you know nothing about gardening and growing dahlias. It was a little pointless being the first ones there, as it was a free for all with everyone just grabbing snips and secateurs and rushing in.
You can take your own buckets and fill with water to put your picked flowers in, or they provide them. Dahlias need to be in water, so if you don’t have a bucket to take them home in, you can pay a pound for a delivery type of card bucket, and they put the stems in a bag of water, so they’re safe for the journey home. Mine made it home on the hour long drive, and were still perfect on arrival.
The Dahlia field
The field is so pretty. With different pinks, cream, white, oranges and deep red and purple, the dahlias make a pretty sight, and aisles to walk along. This year they were planted with sheeting over to keep the weeds out. So there was a warning to watch out for surprise unevenness of the ground, as well as it possibly being slippy. On a hot day it was fine, but worse weather might be a different matter.
We could just wander along the plants and pick our arm-length stems as wanted. I love the ball and pom pom dahlias. But the large open varieties looked beautiful too.
Some varieties had much shorter stems so it did mean sometimes having to opt for a different colour if they weren’t really suitable for picking. There was plenty to choose from, and I could have picked so many more.
The advice was to check the back of the flowers for dry crepey papery feeling petals, and to avoid those. That would mean we got longer lasting flowers.
As well as the flowers, they also have the pink Dahlia Beach bus in the field. You can visit there to buy merchandise and get refreshments. Then sit on the benches and enjoy the view of the flowers and fields behind.
Once you’ve picked your fill (and some people really were filling their buckets), you can pay before you leave. With your entry fee, you get 3 stems included. Then you pay by stem for the rest of the flowers you’ve picked. As it was the first weekend, there was a discounted price – I noticed on email they say they do offers through the season.
Worth a visit?
I found them really enthusiastic in explaining about the flowers and the field, and they really wanted to make sure you were happy with your picks. The flowers were beautiful, and everyone was very polite in keeping out of the way (always good when sharp snips are around!).
If you don’t want to pick your own or the slots end up booked up before you can go, they also have a flower stand outside the Millets Farm shop, so you can buy bouquets there.
It was lovely to visit a different type of flower field. I was only there for the dahlias, but there’s so much at Millets Farm, you could stay all day visiting all the different parts. There were a couple of people with toddlers there. It’s not the most exciting for children, but combine it with the play barn or meeting the animals, and it’s a good mix out for all ages.
Maybe I might make the effort to buy a few tubers, and see if I can grow some for next year.
Are you a dahlia fan? Have you been somewhere similar?
Try these other places for flower fields through the year: