Our Story: Chapter 3

The Pause

After all the challenges we had faced we were so happy. So excited. We fought the initial temptation to leap into working on the field and dodged the mistake of growing in the frost pocket. Watching where the winter sun found the ground first and where the frost lay late into the afternoon. Feeling where the wind was strongest. Squelching through the boggy bits. That was time well spent. We tentatively started doing some work in the new year. Fencing. Drainage. Soil analysis. We placed orders, set up meetings, tapped numbers into spreadsheets. It was so exciting.

In February I went to a conference near London and stayed a few days. People gathered from around the country and I sat with friends who’d been skiing in Italy. I saw somebody wearing a face mask on the train on my way home. How weird, I thought. Back home I developed a really bad cold. A dreadful cough. I really struggled and barely left the sofa for weeks. It went on and on. I went to the doctors and I asked “could this be the virus on the news?”

“Have you been to China?” She responded.

Within two weeks we had taken the boys out of school, terrified for our son with asthma. We delivered Mother’s Day Bouquets with a sense of dread; usually this celebrations marks the start of the season, but as our tulips started to flower, the whole world started to close down. Locked down, locked up, and so scared.

Our flowers did find purpose in the pandemic. Initially everything paused. In that eerie silence we gave them away to neighbors and customers came forward suggesting key workers who we could gift them to. Then funeral directors (and some customers, sadly) approached us because the Dutch auctions had closed and funeral flowers weren’t available. We made our Farewell Flowers and provided a little comfort.

Despite spending those hot days happily on the field, playing and putting up polytunnels, I really felt the grief of our customers and the struggle of those on the frontline. It brought the severity of the situation home. We doubled down on growing flowers, unsure where the business was heading but knowing that flowers were important and needed at this dark time.

-Harriet x