About
A Keen gardener all my life (I remember Mr Jones from across the road giving me some cornflower seedlings to plant out when I was around 6 years old) I finally took the plunge a couple of years ago, gave up the day job and embarked on my RHS Level 2 Certificate in Horticulture. Whilst this was great fun and I did learn, for me it really only highlighted how there is nothing better than practical experience and just getting on with it! Since then I have slowly grown more and more cut flowers in the family vegetable garden... until suddenly the whole plot has been given over to beautiful seasonal flowers and I am expanding into other areas of the garden!
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I love growing flowers but I think I almost love arranging them more. Curating and picking the right blooms to compliment each other and then just letting the beauty of the flowers shine for themselves.
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Passionate about locally grown flowers and always buying grown not flown at any time of the year all my flowers are produced in the most sustainable way that I can.
I use beautiful peat free compost from Dalefoot to give my plants the best start. My beds are mulched to reduce the amount of water required and rainwater is collected and re used wherever I can.
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I never ever use florist foam in my arrangements and do not use plastic wrap on my bouquets.
I am also very happy to be a member of the wonderful flowersfromthefarm initiative.
Why all the fuss about British Flowers?
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Did you know that 86% of the cut flowers sold in the UK come from abroad*? These hothoused blooms sold in British supermarkets, flower shops and on online sites are imported from Holland and flown in from as far afield as the large-scale commercial growers of Kenya, Ethiopia, Israel, Ecuador and Colombia. The carbon footprint of a bouquet of imported blooms is estimated to be 20 times higher** than a beautiful bouquet from a local flower farmer, who typically cultivates hundreds of different varieties of flowers and foliages outdoors across the season.
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Flowers from your local flower farmer will be freshly picked and locally delivered. Each individual flower will have the natural, unique, informal beauty that can only come from small-scale, outdoor production. Your local flower farmer grows with the seasons and is motivated by the excitement of harvesting the first of the sweet peas, dahlias, garden roses, anemones, larkspur, snapdragons and cornflowers rather than by predictable, year-round crops. No one bouquet will be the same from your local flower farmer, each one will be beautifully unique.
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Mass-market flowers will have been bred to withstand the rigours of international shipping and mass production rather than to possess intoxicating fragrance. Now, smell a beautiful bouquet of fresh cut flowers grown by your local British flower farmer, and the experience is altogether different. You will be enveloped in a heady concoction of delicious fragrances and transported by childhood memories of flower-filled gardens.
Fifty years ago, imported flowers were rare and exotic. Today, British flowers are the new exotics and British growers need your support. Find out where your flowers have been grown before you buy. Don’t just rely on the words ‘seasonal’ or ‘direct from the grower’. Buy British.
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Isn’t it high time we started thinking of flowers as we increasingly do about food: valuing seasonal, fresh, locally grown and more unusual varieties over mass imports? I certainly think so.
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Find your local flower farmer at www.flowersfromthefarm.co.uk.
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* DEFRA 2018 ** Rebecca Swinn - MSc dissertation on The Carbon Footprint of Flowers