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LIVE 24-SEVEN


The market for home-grown flowers has boomed in recent years and as we hit the height of summer, this is definitely something that every plant lover should be celebrating!


Individually, it seems that more of us are setting aside ‘cutting beds’ filled with patches of petalled perfection destined for vases on our tables and windowsills. Alstromeria have to be amongst my top choice here, as they are one of the longest-lasting cut flowers, come in a wide range of colours and look stunning outside or in! There is so much choice though and once you start, you’ll have trouble stopping, as people across the country have found out!


It was Constance Spry who, back in the Art Deco period of the 1920s, set up her first flower shop in Pimlico and favoured a more natural British grown approach, indeed providing many of the flowers for her shop from her own garden! However by the time we reached the 1970s, the British cut flower industry was declining and in the following decades imports increased dramatically.


Fast forward a few decades and thankfully we’re in an excellent sustainable place and have recently witnessed country wide celebrations for British Flowers Week, with a highlight being celebrity florist Simon Lycett’s collaboration with co-operative ‘Flowers from the Farm’ at The Royal Opera House, where a Flower exhibition at the Paul Hamlyn Hall is running from now until September. This is a new temporary display celebrating the role of flowers in opera and ballet, which will lead visitors around the building, taking place on the site of the original 19th century flower market.


Flowers from the Farm was founded in 2011 and is a highly successful co-operative of British cut flower growers. It has over 500 members across the country, including many locally from Hereford’s Twisted Sisters in Marden and Jenny Wren Flowers in Almeley to Gloucestershire’s Cotswold Posy Patch in Bentham, who during the flower season also run a Flower Club for other


British flowers enthusiasts and deliver workshops on a range of floristry and flower growing topics.


Recently I had the honour of meeting and filming with Rosebie Moreton of The Real Flower Company based in Chelsea. Rosebie was frustrated with the cut flowers that she saw for sale back in the 1990s – they had a very ‘commercially grown look’ – and set off on a mission to introduce a more natural aesthetic to the cut flower world, that of the English country gardens she remembered her mother tending while growing up. Over two decades later, she grows 24 different types of scented roses, as well as many other fragrant flowers, herbs and foliage. The Beckhams used roses from Rosebie for their wedding flowers and sweet peas from the company were used on the barge at the Queen’s Jubilee. The world of fashion has also taken note, with the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Alice Temperley (now recently available at John Lewis, Cheltenham I note!) featuring their flowers. We also had one of their beautiful bouquets in our dining room a few weeks ago: the box that it arrived in was a joy to behold before we had even reached what lay inside!


If you are travelling around Pershore this month, you may well have stumbled across ribbons of colour or indeed your Facebook feed has been dappled with photos of your friend’s angelic children amongst fields of blooms. Well this is The Real Flower Petal Confetti Company who have recently held their confetti field open days. (No relation to Rosebie’s company, but of course championing the same home grown horticultural delights!) Growing masses of delphiniums and cornflowers, from which the best petals are selected and sold for wedding confetti, this really is a local sight for sensational eyes!


If you’d like to create your own cutting garden, why not start with picking out some bulbs from catalogues for planting this autumn? Daffodils/tulips are both a perfect start for next spring flowering and alliums of course look great in a vase when in bloom, but also the dried seed-heads add permanent beauty to an indoor display. Here’s to growing British!


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THROUGH THE GARDEN GATE CAMI L LA BAS S E T T - SMI TH


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