We’re closing out 2025 with a soulful, grounded, and beautifully honest conversation with Brooke Stewart of Meadowbrook Flower Farm. Set between Port Fairy and Warrnambool, Brooke’s six-acre farm is shaped by wind, weather, family, and the deep desire to build something meaningful from home.

Brooke shares how flower farming became the anchor she needed during motherhood, a FIFO lifestyle, raising a child with Williams Syndrome, and the isolation of early COVID. What started with a handful of Aldi dahlias, a cottage garden, and a suggestion to “go for a walk and listen to a podcast” has grown into a thriving, seasonal farm that reflects her resilience, curiosity, and huge heart.

This episode is rich with learning, laughter, and the kind of honesty that reminds us why Dish the Dirt exists: to celebrate the growers, the stories, and the small everyday triumphs happening on farms across Australia.

As the final episode of the year, it feels fitting, grounding, and full of hope. Thank you to every listener who has tuned in, shared an episode, spread the word, and supported local flower farmers in 2025. This community is a gift.

• How Brooke discovered flower farming through motherhood and a well-timed podcast recommendation
• Building a flower farm around FIFO schedules & family life
• Moving from a 120-year-old cottage to six acres of possibility
• Floods, droughts, crickets, windbreaks & the unpredictable reality of farming
• Her love for bulbs (especially gladioli!) and planning crops around life, not perfection
• Soil regeneration, composting & reducing inputs
• The power of showing up at conferences and finding your flower farming “village”
• Overcoming imposter syndrome and claiming the title “farmer”
• Community dinners, local networks & the importance of women supporting women

3 things she’d take if she had to leave quickly:

• Her zero-turn mower
• A sunflower head for seeds
• A handful of trusty snips

One flower to repopulate an empty island:

• Bells of Ireland (or Gladioli!)

Flower hero:

• Lisa Mason Ziegler

This is the final Dish the Dirt episode of 2025.

Thank you for:

• every listen
• every share
• every message
• every time you’ve supported a grower featured on the show

Your support builds this community, lifts up our growers, and keeps these stories alive. I can’t wait to bring you more voices, more farms, and more beauty in 2026.

Add any links here if you’d like @meadowbrookeflowerfarm

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