With mums around the country eagerly awaiting the 30th March and the arrival of their Mothers Day bouquets we hope that you will be supporting our British flower farmers this year. Only 10% of flowers bought in the UK are currently grown in Britain and we see that as a real shame. We grow some absolutely gorgeous varieties all year round, so there really is no excuse.
I was lucky enough to be sent an early spring bouquet by The Great British Florist who are part of the Duchy Estate. A mix of early blooms and herbs the fragrance is like nothing else and truly fills the room. Here I am telling you a little bit more… unfortunately without smell-o-vision (but dodgy camera work is included)
The Great British Florist are just one of the fantastic companies really supporting our British flower growers and a urge you to seek them, and those like the, out. Your mum will be very glad you did!
The Great British Florist: http://www.greatbritishflorist.co.uk/
– Emily
In a past life I did some work for a company owned by Interflora. To my disgust I found that nearly all the flowers sold in UK supermarkets, florists and petrol stations are grown in Holland and transported (ready cut) in chilled container lorries.
This is another area where any UK government worth its gold plated pensions would be encouraging British companies to grow flowers to revive our devastated manufacturing sector. The weather in the UK is very similar to Holland, and I think most are grown indoors anyway.
I despair of our successive governments (all colours) and weep to see how our membership of the EU damages our economy.
We can’t even organise a nationwide BUY BRITISH campaign. But let’s BUY BRITISH anyway and to hell with the lot of them.
I moved to Suffolk when I was 15 years old in 1967. When I first came to live here people grew flowers on a grand scale. The village of West Row was a sea of flowers in the summer and the smell of Night Scented Stocks on a summer evening was everywhere in the village and smelt wonderful. Twice a day lorries took the flowers to Covent Garden to be sold at the market. Very sad to say the flower growers are all gone now.
They look good – very much like the flowers from Wiggly Wigglers in Herefordshire but a bit cheaper! x
There may be more to home-grown flowers than immediately meets the eye. I admit I have no hard data, but I suspect that to get out-of-season blooms from UK / Holland many growers use heated greenhouses. I have heard that the energy cost involved is somewhat greater here than to fly flowers in from (e.g.) Kenya, where they need no heat to grow. This source also helps the economy of a developing country.
It isn’t clear from the British supplier described whether or not they use heat in their greenhouses.
The key is to use what we can generate domestically when it is in season. Blindly demanding out-of-season produce, whether it be roses or strawberries fuels high-energy useage in the supply chain.
It makes me so happy to see people, whether in Britain or wherever, buying local products. In the US, most roses are flown in from South America. They are also drenched in pesticides.