about me

Catkin was launched in 2006 by me - Dr Rachel Petheram. My passion for flowers began in 2002 when I grew my own wedding flowers. This love blossomed into an artisan floristry and flower growing business. As an ardent champion of British grown flowers, I was at the forefront of the revival of the movement, growing many of my own flowers in various locations, and now in the stunning walled kitchen garden of Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire, where I have been based since 2009. I was featured on the BBC’s ‘The Great British Garden Revival’ in 2013 and on Gardeners World in 2019 and on Smithsonian Channel TV series ‘An American Aristocrat’s Guide to Great Estates’.

Over the years I have come to realise that working with the garden, working with nature, is a collaborative relationship. The garden is a living ecosystem, it is a free-willed space. This connection is deep and visceral and has become fundamental to everything that I now do. I became a reiki master and use energy and nature together to help people to find that relationship with nature and themselves.   I have a particular skill in working with flowers and reiki, where I use individual flowers to help you to identify where you might be stuck or what is holding you back. It is a very powerful tool and often feels easier, earthier and more accessible for many people.

I am a very good listener and am highly empathic and intuitive. In addition to my business, I worked as an academic for 20 years, mentoring and teaching students. I hold counselling and mental health first aid qualifications and I am skilled at holding a space for you to become unstuck, to deepen your connection and relationship with nature and to find joy and confidence in who you are. My thing is helping you find your thing.

I look forward to working with you.
Rachel x

MY GARDEN

Tucked away within the ancient walls of a large Elizabethan kitchen garden in Lincolnshire is my garden. It is designed to put habitat and diversity at its heart. To create a sense of calm, enclosure, inspiration as well as production. It is a bit wild, free- willed, full of energy and very beautiful.

The connection with my garden is visceral, I am as much part of the garden as it is part of me. Both very much in tune with the rhythms and seasons of the natural world. 

The Doddington Hall gardening team work alongside me, growing fruit and vegetables within the walls of this authentic kitchen garden. They enjoy the freedom to grow without using harmful pesticides and chemicals thanks to the abundant biodiversity of insects, birds, toads, grass snakes and more within this unique ecosystem. Everyone who visits is enchanted and will often take a little of the magic of this very special garden home with them.