How just four dahlias turned into 18,000 at Bungaree

Lorelie Merton discovered her love for flower breeding and growing going on to build up her farm to house 18,000 plantings.

Lorelie Merton has transformed four dahlia pots into more than 18,000 plantings at Bungaree.

The first-generation flower grower said she never expected to become a farmer during her speech pathology career, but her once-hobby has since developed into a full-time operation with employees.

She started with four pots at her rented home seven years ago, before her husband Ethan, an agronomist, helped her grow it to 300 seedlings before it reached 18,000 for her Florelie business. Her current favourite colouration was a Florelie Cosmic Romance, which was raspberry with white tips.

Florelie Seasonal Flowers is a flower farm owned by Lorelie Merton at Bungaree. Lorelie grows dahlias and due to a recent frost, Lorelie is feeding some of the damaged flowers to her sheep. Luckily the frost came post Valentines day and wasn't bad enough to wipe out the whole lot. Pictures: Zoe Phillips

They also have Wiltshire Horn sheep, chickens, a vegetable garden and an orchard for their own use.

“I’ve always loved flowers but I never really wanted to live on a farm, in my mind farms were synonymous with isolation,” she said.

“But that’s not the case, we’re 15 minutes from Ballarat. It started as a hobby and grew from there. I started sharing about growing flowers on Instagram.”

Lorelie supplies wholesale to florists or direct to the public, and also grows cosmos, amaranth, scabiosa, feverfew, zinnias, celosia and phlox.

“One of the other parts of the business is peonies, I love peonies. It’s part of my origin story, I got gifted a bunch of homegrown peonies about 11 years ago and I’d never seen them in person before but they were just beautiful,” she said.

NEWS: Flower farmer Lorelie Merton at Bungaree.

Lorelie propagated peonies for nine years, and planted her first crop, with 4500, in autumn of last year.

Recent frosts had affected her dahlia yield which caused one day of order cancellations.

“It caused damage to the plants and we would’ve lost thousands of flowers that we would’ve had to deadhead and feed to the sheep, but the plants are really doing well for the most part,” she said.

“I’m just really grateful for people who support locally-grown flowers, our business wouldn’t exist without the florists who choose to buy Australian and Victorian-grown flowers.”

NEWS: Florelie Seasonal Flowers is a flower farm owned by Lorelie Merton at Bungaree.