Geoff Bottomley

Grower and CEO of Prime Flowers

As CEO of Prime Flowers for the past 24 years, Geoff Bottomley has been a longstanding producer of beautiful local blooms. He spoke with us about his time in the floral industry and the future of locally grown flowers.

How did you begin your career as a flower grower and what led you to lilies?

I have always had a love of growing things. I originally trained as an animal geneticist, and in the early 80s I started growing carnations on a semi-commercial scale, whilst working in the Department of Agriculture. That was my introduction to growing flowers. As a grower in Australia, you really need to specialise so that you can produce volume and in the 80s, carnations made up nearly half of all flower sales. In the 90s they fell out of favour and the trend was more for gerberas, tulips and Dutch iris. Later, I saw an opportunity to grow lilies here and bought the farm in 1996. Lilies are a temperate crop and here it’s temperate in the winter and tropical in the summer. (They don’t grow as well in the summer, so we have shade cloths to help with that.)

Could you describe a day on the flower farm?

Well, there’s essential operations and preparing to plant, which is done by hand down on your hands and knees. Then there’s a constant need to ensure good irrigation and disease control. Picking, grading, bunching and sending the flowers off to market – that happens almost every day. We’ll spend 3-4 days a week picking in the winter and almost every day of the week in the summer. It’s full time, that’s for sure. And no matter how careful you are, taking precautions to protect the flowers, you can still get caught out from time to time!

Have you noticed any big shifts in the industry since you began growing and more recently?

Yes, today, there are not nearly as many growers in Australia. The local industry has been decimated by imports. Now less than half of the flowers sold in Australia are grown here. The rest have been flown in. It’s been caused by the strong Aussie dollar, as well as a worldwide surplus of flowers. 

As a result of Covid-19, there have been fewer passenger flights which means that it has become far more expensive to send flowers overseas, because now you would need to pay the commercial freight rate which is much higher. (Usually flowers fly ‘stand-by’ to fill up passenger flights and that’s a much cheaper rate.) 

For now, we’re seeing an increase in demand for local product as a result, but I think that it’s temporary. 

Have you had to make any changes to your business model to address the current situation with covid-19?

We haven’t felt any particular impact from Covid. It all happened too late for us to make any major changes to this year’s order. You only get one chance to order bulbs each year, based on when they are picked, so we haven’t been able to plant any additional bulbs to take advantage of the increase in demand for local flowers.

What we’d really love to see going forwards is for local florists and supermarkets to put up a sign that reads ‘grown here not flown here’ to promote locally grown flowers. Local flowers are often better quality and have a longer vase life – and the amount of fossil fuel that it takes to bring flowers here from overseas is just ridiculous. It would be great to see a long-term change on that front. 

Have you noticed any emerging trends in floristry on the Gold Coast? 

What has been constant is an increasing demand for foliage. It has been great to see that side of the business growing over the past 10 years and we will keep expanding that. We are also growing Alstroemeria commercially now which is a new flower for us and gaining popularity in the market. 

Do you have any advice for lovers of flowers?

Take care to learn how to look after flowers so that you get the best results from them. It’s simple but so many people don’t know, and it makes such an enormous difference to how well they last and how they look. Simply snip off a couple of centimetres of stem, remove lower leaves and changing their water every two days. Flowers bloom at different times as well, so remove dead flowers to keep the rest looking nice; that will really help you to enjoy your flowers for longer. 

Interview by Alice de Groot