There is a renaissance occurring on our very shores. Largely, it’s our sisters who are doing it for themselves!
Whether its Georgie Newbury at Common farm flowers, Fiona Pickles at Firenza floral design, Natalya Ayers and Fiona Inglis, at Pyrus botanicals, or the scores more from all corners of the Kingdom, soil is being tilled, boots are being muddied, and hands are being roughened. It’s exciting and beautiful and we are very much looking forward to getting more involved with it. New Covent Garden Flower Market will never get rid of us. It will never stop providing us with wondrous variety when we go. But supporting our own growers is becoming increasingly important to us.
And what is great is that if, like us, you aren’t yet able to cultivate your own beauties, it really is still very easy for one and all to buy British.
Whether you are after a bouquet for your partner as a treat, you are a florist who aspires to provide more British blooms in your arrangements, or you would like to attend workshops with locally produced flora and fauna, a passionate community of flower farmers is blooming (sorry!) nationwide. And they are so accessible thanks to resources such as Flowers from the Farm, Great British Florist and The British Flower Collective. All you do is tap in where you live and those internet search engines do the rest to tell you which farming magicians are nearby.
Flowers from the Farm began as an initiative in 2011 with a mandate to encourage and promote more folks to grow cut flowers for the domestic market. Gill Hodgson, a fellow Yorkshire lady, set up the not-for-profit group which now has over 300 cut-flower growers as members. Early this month, the initiative won the Best Environmental Initiative at the UK Grower Awards 2017. We think that’s a pretty awesome accolade. Although the members don’t necessarily claim organic status, the growers do largely try to avoid pesticides with flowers only saying hello in their natural cycles. The carbon footprint is obviously less than the blooms that have been imported. Members are said to help and support each other which means the community is becoming stronger. British Growers all round the nation are showing us that team work is totally making their dream work. Its utterly inspiring.
Home grown florals now account for 10 per cent of the flower market and we hope that this figure will just (floral pun alert) grow and grow!
We think Neil Diamond puts it best:
‘homegrown’s alright with me, homegrown is the way it should be, homegrown is a good thing, plant that bell and let it ring’