Why choose and use locally grown flowers?

Locally grown flowers = fewer flower miles

I’m known for my habit of pushing my wheelbarrow through the local streets on my way to and from the allotment. I’m often greeted with the words: “I didn’t recognise you without your wheelbarrow” if I’m out and about without my trusty companion. I travel just over half a mile with every round trip to the plot, so the footprint of my own flowers is made up of welly and wheelbarrow rubber rather than loads of carbon. Last year was the first year I made an effort to keep cutting records and based on these, I estimate that I used around 7000 stems of flower and foliage which I’d grown myself here in Birmingham.

That’s not to say even my own-grown flowers come without any travel miles – while I might not use chemicals or additional heat to grow them, there are inputs of bought in compost (travel miles and plastic bags), the miles travelled by the seed packets, bulbs, tubers and plants, and also by the other supplies like landscaping fabric which I use to manage the practicalities of my allotment plot. As in every other aspect of life, in growing and floristry it may not be easy or possible to reach an entirely carbon-free nirvana, but it’s important to take the steps that you can and to always aim to do better.

Seasonal outdoor grown flowers = more wow and wiggle

My business is me: a single pair of hands. Here in Birmingham, I don’t have the space (or time) to grow every single stem I use because I’m also responsible for the floristry and every other aspect of running my own small business. So why grow anything? Quite simply, because I couldn’t live without my own flowers and foliage! Anyone who does a floristry workshop will testify how often I nip out of the workshop into the garden, snips in hand, with the words: “Ooh – I know just the thing….”.

Being able to choose the best of the season from my cutting patch and allotment makes the world of difference to the look, feel and scent of my arrangements. My chemical free flowers also feed the bees in the allotment hives (as well as other pollinators and not so welcome pesky pests!). As I see it, every outdoor raised flower cuts down on the plastic wrapping and air-freight miles carried by its imported cousins which fly thousands of miles across the oceans to grace our vases.

Locally grown flowers = wild charm and perfume

I’m proud of the fact that my flowers are grown sustainably, but if I’m honest, the foundation stone for my business is simply that I love the wild aesthetic, perfume and lack of rigid uniformity in my garden-grown flowers. That’s also the reason I use other local growers as my first port of call for additions to my supply.

Left: The Tuckshop allotment in August. Centre: The Honesty Flowers flower field in late September. Right: Collaboration is fun! With Flowers by Meg at Roots in Worcestershire.

Wherever I can during the UK growing season, I’ll always use other locally grown flowers to supplement those I grow myself, sourcing them from businesses that grow on a slightly larger scale like Honesty Flowers in Warwickshire or Flowers by Anna Brian and Flowers by Meg at Roots, both in Worcestershire. It’s fantastic to have links and friendships with other people engaged in the same project as me and I value the spirit of collaboration I get from these connections, as much as I value their beautiful flowers.

Locally grown flowers = less plastic waste

The volume of waste plastic which fills my bin is the thing that always shocks me when I use imported flowers. Having cut around 7000 of my own-grown stems last year, I figure that’s several fewer sacks of plastic and a tiny bit less carbon added to the bigger picture in 2023. Compare a bin full of wrappers with local flowers in a re-usable bucket with a bit of water and filled ONLY with freshly cut blooms, straight from the cutting patch. Minuscule micro steps perhaps, but multiply it by every small scale grower/florist and the numbers grow and it starts to make a difference.

Couldn’t we all campaign for less plastic around our flowers (whether we’re florists or retail consumers)? Given that the majority of flowers sold in the world are commercially supplied, wouldn’t reducing the default setting of plastic wrapping have a far bigger impact on the environment than anything I can achieve by growing flowers locally? Of course wrapping is needed to protect flowers in transit to prevent tangling and breakages, but does it always have to be plastic as a first choice? Why not paper? Maybe we all need to start asking that question to our florists/wholesalers/suppliers?

So why not 100% locally grown flowers year round?

Weather and seasons

You’ve all heard the crop failure stories of farmers on the news due to flooding or drought during these times of climate change, and as a natural crop, flowers are subject to exactly the same stresses as wheat, barley, potatoes or any other plant that grows. I’m a flower grower, but not a magician, so my garden and allotment are experiencing the same growing conditions as yours and the farmers’ fields. And that includes winter scarcity….

In winter, there is no abundance of fresh flowers, so ‘seasonal British grown’ may include dried flowers from summer or commercially grown glasshouse flowers from Lincolnshire or Cornwall. Glasshouses require heat to grow flowers in winter and this has a carbon footprint too, as do the couriers who bring them to my door.

I love smaller orders in winter, because these allow me to embrace the best of the season – I couldn’t flower up a wedding at scale from my own blooms in January, but I can produce loveliness for a funeral wreath even when temperatures dip below zero – here’s one I made yesterday from my own ingredients as frost lay thick on the ground.

The weather also affects flowers even once they’ve grown and produced a cut-worthy bloom. Here are different reasons why I might supplement UK grown flowers with some imports:

• Too hot and I may need to call on ‘bulletproof’ commercial flowers (especially if you want roses) which will last for the duration of an event rather worrying about more delicate varieties wilting or self-destructing into confetti if stressed by extreme heat;
• Too wet and it makes it more difficult to select blooms whose petals are unscathed by weather – but some of my local growers have the protection of polytunnels for their flowers.
• Too cold and it means that varieties we normally expect to be flowering are instead sitting in tight bud and sulkily refusing to budge an inch.
• Too early/late in the year and it means that the choice, quality and quantity of local blooms available is extremely limited as from October-late April they get buffeted by cold winds and storms, or are dormant because of the frosts occurring in late autumn through to late spring.
• Because you ask me to!

Choosing your priorities – colours or provenance?

I love it when as clients, you tell me that seasonal and local is more important than anything… even trumping the constraints of a colour scheme. Why do I love it? Because an open brief like this gives me carte blanche to pick out the best of the season rather than excluding blooms in the ‘wrong’ shade. Properly seasonal flowers in a wide range of colours can be combined in so many ways, especially when interspersed with interesting foliage to bring them together harmoniously, just like in nature itself. This free and open style of floristry is how I always work if left absolutely to my own devices. It’s how I started with floristry and is a complete reversal of the norm – instead of starting with a specific design in mind, this approach has the most beautiful flowers and foliage on cutting day at its heart and my designs are inspired by their forms, colours and how can they work beautifully together.

But I also know, from working as a florist for more than 12 years that although many of you value the beauty of the seasons and local provenance, when push comes to shove, in many cases a colour scheme will still be your strongest priority because it’s what you ‘see’ for your flowers in your mind’s eye. I get it and these ‘imaginings’ are why I’ll always have discussions about pastels, darks or brights during any conversation about an order. During the peak of the growing season from late spring to early autumn, there are a range of flowers to accommodate most colour schemes by using my own supplies and buying in what I need from other local growers. However, if it’s a period of peak local demand – for example during the height of the summer wedding season – there are times when I need to call upon imported supplies, particularly for large orders using sought after colours like pinks, blush tones and whites.

Flowers bloom after a long period of growth, so where I know the colours required by large orders like weddings well in advance, I can plan my growing with these in mind. Long lead in times allow me to do this. However, shorter notice orders for events and funerals can at times pose more of a colour challenge because there’s no magic cupboard from which I can conjure up perfect petals in particular colours within a couple weeks if they’re not already planted and growing. So once again, imported blooms are sometimes necessary if I need to get hold of flowers quickly to meet a colour scheme.

Volume and availability

Sometimes, for large weddings with a particular colour scheme, recourse to imports might necessary to source the volume of flowers required – for example, even between myself and other local growers, I doubt we’d be able to muster 150 blush pink roses, open to the perfect stage for one specific day in the calendar (and even if such a feat were magically possible, we would have probably sold them three times over in summer). If your wedding is large, I do have premium UK rose growers I can call on for beautifully scented supplies, but I have to meet their minimum order value requirement. The retail value of this minimum order alone would eat up the bulk of the budget for a modest wedding before I’d even arranged a stem. This means that for roses, sometimes imports are the more financially realistic option.

Maybe you want a particular variety of flower that just doesn’t grow well here in the UK or which, though beautiful in the garden, doesn’t perform well as a cut flower. Often, a suitable seasonal alternative is available if you can be flexible, but if you have your heart set on a particular flower which neither I or my local growers produce (though we do produce a huge variety of blooms between us!), if it’s available in the commercial supply chain, I may be able to source it for you. Remember though that desire for a certain flower does not guarantee its availability, even as an import. (NB: Peonies are NOT available year round!!)

As an example… during this cold January week with frost thick on the ground, I’ve spent the week hunting high and low for purple/burgundy toned foliage for today’s funeral casket spray. I found nothing to meet this brief via any wholesalers and my own go-to purple-leaved shrubs are deciduous and bare. However, after much head scratching and frustrated searching, it was the garden and allotment which came up trumps with the purple stemmed trails of a variegated ivy and the burgundy hues of oak-leafed hydrangea foliage holding on staunchly to its woody stems. I got lucky, but it isn’t always guaranteed. Sometimes you really just can’t find stuff.

The importance of honesty

And no, I’m not talking about the dried flower (though it’s a great dried winter staple!). I want to provide you with beautiful flowers for events, weddings and funerals year round and I want you to understand where your flowers come from. I want to give you flowers that you love, that look and smell amazing and sometimes I need a little help from imports to do this, for all the reasons I’ve outlined above. But if you come to me with an open mind and tell me that you ONLY want to use British grown flowers, whatever the season, then that’s what I’ll give you. That’s my promise, that’s what I can deliver, so the choice is up to you.

Find out more

• Read more blogs
• See wedding flowers
• See funeral flowers
• Contact me to discuss flowers for your event
• Read more about sustainability and waste in weddings and how you can make your day greener. A interesting read from 77 Diamonds on planning an eco-friendly, zero-waste celebration