Dish the Dirt

What if the answer to floristry's floral foam problem could be grown instead of manufactured?
In this episode, Bec sits down with Kristina Bircsak of Miconet Solutions, creator of Natriform — a plant-based floral mechanic grown from hemp and mycelium, developed right here in Australia in collaboration with working florists.
Bec and Kristina first met at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, where Kristina's incredible mycelium sculpture was turning heads. But what started as a hobby — growing mycelium fibreboard with her partner to replace single-use plastics — soon became something much bigger. After attending a sustainability workshop at MIFGS, Kristina discovered just how damaging floral foam really is: breaking down into microplastics, harmful to touch and breathe, and quietly embedded in an industry built around nature.
Kristina also shares the deeply personal moment behind it all. Seven years ago she survived bowel cancer, and it changed everything — what she cared about, what she wanted to leave behind, and the impact she wanted to make on the world. Natriform is her answer.
Together, Bec and Kristina dig into:
• What Natriform actually is — mycelium as the glue, hemp as the structure, and why growing a product is like "taming a beast"
• The hundreds of prototypes tested over years, using rescued secondhand flowers
• What it's like to use on the bench: overnight soaking, planned workflows, fridge storage, and that satisfying stem grip
• Why casket arrangements and the funeral industry could be transformed by it
• End of life: it dries out, crumbles into your compost or garden bed — and might even grow you a crop of mushrooms
• The AS 5810 home-compostable wrap that keeps every drip contained
• Why hemp and mycelium make it genuinely sustainable from start to finish — low water, fast growing, soil regenerating
• How feedback from florists directly shaped the product (bigger, deeper blocks are on the way)
• The industry tide turning against foam — MIFGS, the RHS and a foam-free Chelsea
• What's next: full-scale production, new shapes and quick tutorials
• And Kristina's advice for any florist wanting to take one step towards foam free: educate yourself, and change just one thing
If you've ever tried to ditch the foam and slipped back because the alternatives were too fiddly or time consuming, this conversation will give you real hope — an Australian-made product designed with florists, for florists, is nearly here.
Find Kristina and follow Natriform's journey:
Website: miconetsolutions.com.au
Follow Miconet Solutions on Instagram and Facebook for product updates and release news
About the guest: Kristina Bircsak is the co-creator of Natriform and founder of Miconet Solutions. What began as a hobby growing mycelium fibreboard to replace single-use plastics became a years-long mission to develop a genuinely sustainable, Australian-grown alternative to floral foam — developed in collaboration with florists and mentors across the industry.
Follow Dish the Dirt on Instagram: @_dishthedirt_

Dawn Allen began as a Saturday girl in her local florist shop, met her husband at Covent Garden Flower Market, and now farms Australian natives from Bob's Garden — fifty acres at Boneo on the Mornington Peninsula, looking out to Bass Strait. In May, she took banksias to the Chelsea Flower Show with her exhibit Banksia Evolution, tracing the banksia from seed pod to full bloom, and came home with a silver-gilt.
In this episode, Dawn shares:
Starting out in a UK florist shop and how floristry kept pulling her back
Falling for wildflowers fifteen years ago, when King Proteas were three dollars a stem
Bob's Garden — the fifty-acre property at Boneo, the man it's named for, and letting his plants live out their lives in the ground
Why farm-grown, not flown, matters: freshness, chemicals, and supporting Victorian flower farms
Her love of the kinked, cockatoo-chewed, perfectly imperfect stem
Winning Spirit of the Show at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show
Applying for Chelsea — being number 11 out of 10 the first year, then getting the acceptance email just before Christmas
Designing Banksia Evolution: seed to plant to flower to full bloom, with steel tubing as the life force running through it
The growers who backed her, and 27 boxes of flowers arriving in London without one broken stem
Bump-in at Chelsea: the portal, the time slots, and why organisation is everything
Discovering the silver-gilt medal on her exhibit on judging morning
International florists asking "what are these, where can I get them?"
With thanks to the growers who made Chelsea happen:
Craig Scott — East Coast Wildflowers
Cassie and the Musson family — Wafex Australia
Robert Luff — paper daisies
Brimstone Waratahs
Banksia Co
Find Dawn: Peninsula Wildflower — Bob's Garden, Boneo, Mornington Peninsula @peninsulawildflower_
Photos of Banksia Evolution are up on our socials — go and have a look.

Five years ago, Bec sat down with Petrina from Petrina Blooms as Melbourne crawled out of its first COVID lockdown. This episode, she finally makes it back for that promised gin — and finds out everything that's bloomed, died back and come up again since.
What started as an accidental side hustle off a single Facebook message has turned into a full business, taking Petrina to teach floral workshops in France and, soon, on a retreat in India. She's also finished writing her first book, Garden Joy — a deeply personal look at how the garden has held her through grief, loss and postnatal depression — out worldwide in March next year.
They dig into what's changed in the garden itself: 16,000 bulbs (up from a few thousand), a growing patch of natives to handle Melbourne's warming winters, a heartbreaking loss of a thousand delphiniums to slugs and snails, and Petrina's ongoing (unofficial) quest for a rose named after her.
There's a check-in on the local and seasonal flower movement they both championed back in 2020 — and how far it's actually come — before the mic flips, and Petrina turns the tables to interview Bec. They cover Dish the Dirt's growth to ~90 episodes, why Growers Avenue at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show matters so much, and details on Bec's upcoming New Zealand workshop in Kakanui (26–27 September).
TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Reunited, five years on 01:16 The garden today 02:19 Then vs. now 05:26 From side hustle to real business 08:14 The book: Garden Joy 15:15 Heartbreak in the garden 16:47 Climate change & the garden 19:04 Garden tours & the flower bar 22:13 Has the local-flower shift happened? 27:36 The rose (and the Slovenia discovery) 29:21 The three things test 31:50 Flip the mic: Petrina interviews Bec 40:38 Bec's New Zealand workshop 50:12 Outro
Find Petrina and that glorious garden on Instagram at @PetrinaBlooms.
Want to be on the show? No garden is too big or too small — get in touch at dishthedirtpodcast@gmail.com

Some episodes are time capsules. This is one of them.
We're rewinding to late 2020, as Victoria emerged from its first long lockdown — gin raised, friends finally allowed over, the whole state breathing out. In the middle of it sits Petrina from Petrina Blooms: a lifelong flower obsessive who turned a suburban Ivanhoe block into a garden of 8,000+ bulbs and 120 roses, and who had just started selling bouquets completely by accident.
Petrina has loved flowers since she grew a single perfumed carnation from seed in prep and wrote in her grade-six diary that she wanted to be a florist. She kept that love deliberately un-commercial for decades, working weekends as a florist's "bucket girl" because she never wanted to "curse a flower" by making it her job. Her path wound through years working with people experiencing homelessness, then to the skies as an Emirates flight attendant — earning the nickname "Flower Girl" for smuggling peonies, lilacs and frangipani home in the first-class fridge. After marrying a passenger and trading Dubai's seasonless heat for Melbourne's four seasons, she came home, felt utterly lost, and ordered four thousand ranunculus for a tiny terrace garden.
From there it grew: a move to Ivanhoe "for the garden," a 40-year-old wisteria she refused to renovate around, a postnatal depression she gardened her way through, an open garden that welcomed kindergartens and neighbours, and — in lockdown, off a single Facebook message — her first bouquets for sale. A warm, funny, generous chat about old-fashioned flowers, healing and community.
What we cover:
(04:00) A carnation grown in prep and a grade-six diary entry
(06:00) Becoming a florist's "bucket girl" — and keeping flowers casual
(08:30) Bluffing her way into Emirates and life as the "Flower Girl"
(10:00) Chasing flowers around the world — Switzerland, Munich, Dubai
(13:00) Meeting Ricky on a flight to Vienna and the 4,000-ranunculus order
(16:00) Henry, postnatal depression, and gardening as a way through
(18:00) Buying the Ivanhoe house for its "bones" — and that wisteria
(22:00) The open garden as a way to connect a quieter neighbourhood
(24:00) Accidentally starting a business in lockdown
(26:00) Chemical-free by choice — coffee grounds, bicarb soda, ladybeetles
(28:00) Grown vs flown: why local and seasonal matters
(34:00) Her best advice: plant what you love, and plant two in case one dies
(39:00) The signature question: Pa's wheelbarrow, cosmos seeds, the wisteria
(43:00) Rose tips, garden heroes, and a dream of a rose named after her
🌿 Find Petrina: @PetrinaBlooms on Instagram
We've since caught up with Petrina five years on — what happened to those secret dahlias, whether the accidental business stuck, and whether Bec ever made it over for that gin. Keep an ear out.
Loved it? Subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and share it with a fellow flower obsessive. Want to be on the show? No garden is too big or too small — email dishthedirtpodcast@gmail.com.
Get out there, do your thing, and be blooming fabulous

Dish the Dirt — Show Notes
The Cotton Bunch with Jamie Rother & Caroline Azria
What happens when a third-generation cotton farmer and a Paris-born UX designer meet at Disney World, fall in love, and end up growing flowers on the Darling Downs? You get The Cotton Bunch — and one of the most unexpected stories in Australian flower farming.
Jamie Rother and Caroline Azria run The Cotton Bunch across two properties near Toowoomba, Queensland. Their journey started as a 3am Sydney Flower Market experiment, survived a pandemic, weathered floods, frosts and a burnt-down farm — and became one of the most exciting growing operations in Southeast Queensland.
In this episode we cover their backstory, the leap from corporate life to full-time farming, the radical mindset shift from yield to aesthetic, reviving a fire-devastated wildflower farm in Hampton, and what it actually takes to hit your targets when the black soil turns to sinking sand. Plus their proudest moment, the harvest that brought the whole team to their knees, and what it means to build something like this with the person you love.
In this episode:
Trading Sydney careers for a cotton farm during COVID
From 3am flower market runs to tens of thousands of sunflower stems a week
Yield vs aesthetic — why floriculture is a completely different mindset
Reviving a 40-acre wildflower farm burned by an arsonist in 2019
Joining Wildflowers Australia and finding their grower community
The Christmas bush harvest that tested everyone
Their proudest Mother's Day moment
Links & Resources
The Cotton Bunch — cottonbunch.com | @thecottonbunch
Wildflowers Australia — wildflowersaustralia.com.au — tickets now on sale for the 11th National Conference & Expo, Sunshine Coast, 14–15 August 2026. Pre-conference farm tour at The Cotton Bunch, Hampton, 12 August.
Madge Goods — madgegoods.com | @madge_goods — use code DIRT15 for 15% off the Stella Jumpsuit
Dish the Dirt goes in search of Australian flower farmers and shares their stories. Hosted by Rebecca Noble. Got a brand that'd love to reach this community? Head to dishthedirt.com.au and hit contact.
Until next time — keep being blooming fabulous. 🌸