Robin Powell: My idea of heaven

I'm surrounded by sweet-smelling roses the colour of milky tea, dahlias in dusky pinks, burgundy cosmos, peachy snapdragons and zinnias like faded wine stains. I have a bucket, a pair of scissors and a free rein: heaven.

This candy store for flower lovers is Elizabeth Back's flower farm at Galston. I'm on a mother-daughter flower foraging workshop, one of the less conventional floristry services offered by Back's business, Wild Aesthetic Flowers, which also provides bouquets and arrangements of just-picked blooms. Back trained as a occupational therapist but says she felt compelled to grow and work with flowers. With no business plan to speak of, she says she had the Field of Dreams refrain in her head as she took the tentative steps towards turning first the front paddock, and then the whole garden, into a flower farm – build it and they will come.

Our magical Saturday morning was the last of the autumn calendar of events and Back is now involved in setting up the flower garden for spring. She sources seed from Australian growers (the usual suspects – Diggers, Lambley, Mr Fothergills, Yates, Eden Seeds and Green Seed Tasmania) as well as from Floret in the US. (Check Biosecurity Import Conditions with the Department of Agriculture online before ordering).

Back finds it easiest to grow the seedlings in Jiffy pots. These are are made from organic material and can be planted whole, avoiding transplant shock to the seedling, and breaking down as the seedling grows. "It's more expensive, but it gives me much greater success," she explains. The Jiffy pots are placed in a tray so that the seedlings can be bottom-watered, preventing the delicate seed being washed out of the pot. They live on a shelf indoors, with bright light but no direct sun.

They are planted into dedicated, mostly rectangular beds – this is all about the flowers, not about garden design – squeezed into the sunny parts of the garden. Paths are narrow and I have to shoulder through dahlias, duck under an overhanging rose, and clamber over a mound of twining passionfruit to get what I want. Everything in the garden can be picked for the vase – from the donut peach, beautiful with its mini-fruit just ripe, to the chocolate-brown dried leaves of bracken.

For spring, Back is planting bulbs and sowing 22 different varieties of sweet peas, as well as larkspur, nigella, cornflower, Iceland poppies, foxgloves, a family reunion of members of the Queen Anne's gang and snapdragons. The snapdragons from last spring were still going when I visited. The bed looked bedraggled but I could still find enough to add to my overblown celebration of flowers and fragrance. It had me smiling for days.

You can find the spring dates for flower events at wildaestheticgardens.com