Our Story: Chapter 5

“Who on earth reads the footnotes?” or Why we only use British flowers.

In my first few months of business I was advised, by another garden based florist, that I should “build the business with imports”. As I grew flowers and sold them, and word of mouth spread, demand grew for our #grownnotflown product and the challenges of ‘cumbrian grown’ became clear, this advice swam around in my thoughts. Were imports required? Could ‘British only’ make ‘business sense?’ Taking on commitments using just what I grew was stressful, but what should I substitute with? I turned to books and online articles, and dismayed by how old a lot of the printed information was I followed the footnotes in online journals into some really ‘out of comfort zone’ science research! There I came across the research by Prof. Khaoula Toumi in the International Journal Environmental Research and Public Health which completely blew my mind. Not only did I not want to touch those flowers, but I didn’t want to support the system that grew them. You can read my blog post on this here.

Alongside the research into the carbon footprint of flowers, I knew that I had to be a ‘British flowers’ business.

Immediately this was challenged: How do we sell British tulips, when buying Lincolnshire tulips from a Cornish wholesaler meant that by the time I received the tulips they had travelled further than if they’d been grown in Holland?! I met Helen Chambers at the Garden Museum’s inaugural British Flower Week competition in 2018 and her very new ‘British Flowers Direct’ fixed that ‘problem’ for me selling direct from Lincolnshire. Buying directly from growers in Cornwall, Lincolnshire and East Anglia, and Yorkshire is how I can avoid air miles, support a better system, and flower life events throughout the year when our own flowers are limited or dormant.

The constraints of selling what is grown in Britain has been defining; our floristry is seasonal and naturalistic. From that early challenge, my research and those footnotes shaped our path. And yes, my footnote reading continues to inform and inspire! (I've currently got some really OLD books on the go!)

-Harriet x