Adapting a flower business in a changing environment

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change”

— Charles Darwin

I am a florist

I love flowers

I love creating beautiful things with flowers

These statements are the “root” of my business. They are the “seed” it has all started from. I had no real business plan when I started in how exactly my life would pan out. I had no five year goals or written documents. I loved flowers. I wanted to work with flowers. Let’s just take it from there....

But my floral business has taken a number of changes of direction along the way. And not always of my choosing. 

Although I’ve always loved flowers and had a pipe dream of being a florist, it was just a lucky chance that got me in. My main career path was as a Marketing professional for a number of companies in London and France but an amazing opportunity came up when I was living in London fifteen years ago that saw me go from almost zero experience to having my own business on the King Road, Chelsea. It was a steep learning curve but with the uber rich and famous as my customers it wasn’t hard to succeed. I mainly sold loose flowers, a few last minute weddings at the Chelsea Registry Office across the road. Some commissions for Keihls and Heals department store and the Manila Blanik Store.  Add a sprinkling of Russian oligarchs and some top A listers (Bob Geldof, Mark Owen, Tara Palmer Tompkinson, Felicity Kendal to name drop a few) and I had myself a decent florist business. I often worked 7 days a week, three of which started at 3 am to visit the flower market. But I learnt loads - sometimes the hard way - but it was an amazing grounding. 

Then twelve years ago we moved to North Devon and the concept of a luxury florist to the rich and famous wasn’t really going to work! No offence but it is a different environment! 

I went back to the “real world” of Marketing but missed my flowers. 

It was the chance reading of an article in a Sunday paper that got my mind whirring again. I read about flower farms and people sowing and selling British flowers. I loved the idea and read everything I could about it. We had the land, we had the polytunnel, I loved flowers - I just needed to persuade the husband this was a viable business idea (not having a husband previously meant I never had to justify my actions but now it seemed a husband was as bad as a business manager!)

I sowed, I grew, I failed, I grew again. Friends asked me to do their wedding flowers and bit by bit there was another “seedling” of a business. Fast forward three years and I have really “branched” out. 

You’ll need to read my previous blog to see where the florist business was in 2019 and how far it had “grown”

But then 2020 came along and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the current plan is starting to “wilt”. 

My crystal ball was not performing as it should when I decided to open a florist shop in Bideford in March. I’d always worked from a workshop at home but after a very successful pop up Christmas shop in Bideford (see another previous blog!) the time seemed right to go High Street full time!  My little blue flower shop opened its doors on the 7 March....... and then closed them again two weeks later on the 22 March (at least I saw Mother’s Day!)

I had around 40 weddings on the books for this year - with enquiries still coming in and then…..

Lockdown.

So, no shop and of course no weddings for the foreseeable. Was this another attack of the aphids on my flourishing floral business ideas?

Initially I turned my back on it and went back to being a full time mum and “teacher” ( oh and catering manager - who knew two boys could eat so much!) but I found myself reading so many heart lifting stories of businesses that had adapted to today’s environment and changed the way they worked, their product offering, their way of working. From Dyson hoovers to ventilators, Tarquins Gin to hand sanitiser, the local pub doing home meal deliveries - it seemed that the best business owners were standing up, brushing themselves down and thinking “right, what next?” They weren't sitting in their pjs watching Joe Wicks, they weren’t scrolling mindlessly through pointless Facebook posts, they weren’t justifying buying more wine as “essential”. They were looking at new business opportunities.

Overnight it seemed the world went online. There were videos, podcasts and tutorials galore. Could I be part of that?  My tech skills are rather limited, resources low and I don’t have the confidence to appear on camera for all to see. I wrote a blog (yes another one for you to read!) on creating your own Easter centrepiece. Give it a go - it doesn’t just have to be for Easter! I feel static image tutorials may be limited as flower arranging is such a visual and creative pastime. So although I have a few more in draft, I’m not sure it’s the right path for me at the moment. 

The turning point was that my fabulous supplier had too adapted and could courier flowers to me. As a big commercial grower of British flowers they had the stock and the means of transporting it. 

The BFA (British Florists Association) had consulted the Government and confirmed that florists could still operate using online means and practise safe delivery methods. I set up new payment systems so I can take money via secure links in texts and emails and looked at the safest delivery practises.

The result: Hand tied bouquets of beautiful British blooms delivered on Fridays across North Devon. No plastic is used, obviously great for the environment, but delivering them straight from water meant they were safe to handle. 

Ideal for birthdays, anniversary day, miss you days and thank you days. In these tough times we all need a bit of cheering up and it’s a three way thing. The sender feels happy they can send some joy, I’m happy to be back with my beloved flowers and the recipient? Well, the smile on their face says it all. 

I’m also doing more funeral work, not that I didn’t before, but it was hard to fit in around all the weddings. I actually enjoy funeral work. It can be very therapeutic, very creative, and you are doing something that again is made with love and brings joy. I speak with the families and learn about the one they have lost. There is often a story behind the flowers that are used; the husband who had no idea of colour and would wear clashing clothes - reflected in a bright and bold casket spray. The grandmother that loved the primroses in the hedgerows and now has them in her wreath.  And it’s not the sad, topical deaths that we hear the daily statistics about. It’s very much the “tide comes in, tide goes out” funerals which just reminds us that life, and death, goes on regardless and there is something strangely comforting about that.

I am a florist

I love flowers

I love creating beautiful things with flowers. 

Confetti - and the value of “Green”

“Red and yellow and pink and green. Purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too! ”

— Arthur Hamilton

When I was a little girl I was a very eager, but very average, pupil at the Brenda Stevens School of Dance. Twice a week I would skip happily along to classes in tap, ballet and modern theatre dance. I, along with millions of other little girls (and boys!) would dream of being a ballerina and twirling in a beautiful pink tutu on stage.  

Now, every four years the dance school would put on a full school recital at a local theatre. There would be months of rehearsals and mounting excitement. I would have been around seven years old when our tap class number was to be the “sing a rainbow” song. There was seven of us in the class and we were arranged in a line in descending height order. Now, not only was I average in dance ability but I was also average in height so I was right in the middle of the line. Our costumes were home made little dresses from satin lining material (oh so flammable!!) Starting from red on the left - I was to be ........ green! 

Suzanne, tall, leggy and blonde, was in striking red (coz she needed to be noticed that little bit more) Then sunshine yellow - all happy and shiny, Pink - every girls dream and envy (I had to stand next to her whilst looking like an offspring of Shrek! - actually Shrek hadn’t been invented then so it was more like kermit!) Vibrant purple - just like the Brazil nut in Quality Street, Orange (maybe not my second choice but at least it’s cheery!) and then cute little Melanie with her curls in a baby blue dress. Being average is not what it’s cracked up to be - it’s obviously stayed on my mind all this time!

Green as a colour in the natural world is everywhere. Trees, grass, leaves and stems. But it’s the other colours in nature that stand out and provoke memories:

Red rose petals - symbolic with love and romance. The cheery and vibrant yellow marigolds. Soft pinks of the elegant larkspur. Heritage sweet peas with hues of mauve and purple. The stand out orange candulas and the ever blue of the most popular cornflower. These are the flowers that make the real floral rainbow and all were growing in profusion this summer in my cutting patch  

The long hot summer put most of the flowering plants into overdrive. Bloom after bloom kept coming but they would also start to go over so quickly in the heat that it was sad to see them come and go without realising their full potential! So why not capture that beauty in an everlasting way by drying the petals to make natural confetti? 

Home grown and hand picked, the petals were dried either in racks in the greenhouse or in a dehydrater to fully dry without losing the natural colour.  

 Each colour way is stored separately so that they can be mixed to create different combinations. Custom mixed to match your wedding themes and colours. But the best thing about this confetti is not it’s colours but the fact it is totally 100% “green” and with no guilty conscience of the pretty littering they will leave behind.

If only my seven year old self knew the true value of “green” 

So don’t let your wedding be average - instead throw a rainbow of colour into the air like you just don’t care and sing that rainbow loud! ***

(***whilst being green and proud!)

Tell me why we don't like (blue) Mondays?

“When I have a bad day, I dream about opening up a gelato stand on the streets of Sydney. Doesn’t everyone have a random escape fantasy?”

— Nancy Lublin

Blue Monday: the day (allegedly) that we are supposed to feel at our lowest in the year. Lack of pay check, grim weather, festive adrenaline died out, diets and resolutions boring, the list goes on. But if this is the worst day then let's get it out of the way and enjoy the rest of the year!

Nancy Lublin says that her dream was the ice cream booth in Australia. Mine was that I always wanted to be that sho sho florist in the south of France. Painted in shabby chic Farrow and Ball colours with vintage pails full of frothy flowers in the never ending sunshine. Chic people buying armfuls of flowers and putting them in their wicker bike baskets as they pedal away. A pipe dream? Or an aspiration?

Okay so there may not be wall to wall sunshine (especially today) or fancy paint effects. The pails are black plastic and not all my customers are necessarily 'chic' but I'm still living the dream. Maybe the parameters just needed to be moved a little. 

There is nothing wrong in dreaming big, many a time in a soulless office I would daydream where I would rather be and how I would tell my boss exactly what I thought of them. It helps you get through the bad days and then other days would be 'wow' days. Everyone has bad days, some more than others, but if we can dream our way through them then all the better. 

Now this pipe dream of mine is not all a bed of roses (excuse the pun). There have been plenty of compromises and sacrifices along the way. January is not a good month for a flower grower or florist. My to do list is all about admin and accounts. Income is minimal. Motivation is scarce. But I know in the coming months the flowers will start to grow, the weddings will continue to build. There will be sunshine. And maybe I could paint the door of my very shabby but not necessary chic workshop a hue of Farrow and Ball. 

So what will you aspire to this 'Blue Monday' ?

oh and some lovely pictures of 'blue' flowers to lift the mood...... 

British Flowers Week

“If one takes pride in one’s craft, you won’t let a good thing die. Risking it through not pushing hard enough is not humility”

— Paul Keating

It's British Flowers Week. It's also National Picnic Week and today is National Sewing Machine Day!! So why do we need a week dedicated to British Flowers? 

We live in a world where we are all interested in the provenance of our food, our clothes, our politicians   - so why not our cut flowers? The UK fresh cut flower and indoor plant market is worth £2.2 billion a year. (The UK music business is worth £2 billion so you can see that it is big business) The average spend per year on cut flowers is £28 per person, which has also risen considerably since 1984 when it was just £8 a head. But compare it to our European neighbours - they spend a whopping £60 - £100 per person per year!

A majority of our flowers are imported from all around the world where warmer climes and cheaper labour make it economic to grow on large scales. Columbia, Kenya and Israel being the top growing countries. 
In fact just 15% of the £2.2 billion is grown in this country. But this equates to £300 million so I'm happy to be a teeny weeny part of that. 

Before moving to Devon around 8 years ago, I had a florist business on the Kings Road in Chelsea. I used to visit the Covent Garden flower market two to three times a week where I could buy any flower all year round. I felt I was spoilt. 
I had one particular customer who only ever wanted white tulips, every week they bought white tulips. 
I could buy these tulips in June and sell them to her for £5 a bunch. Of course I was making a profit on that, I had overheads but still made a profit. The seller at the market made a profit selling them to me. They had been shipped from Holland where the auction house had made a profit on them. They had been flown from New Zealand where the grower had made a profit on them - and paid their workers a wage. All for a final retail value of £5? Where is the ethical value in that? And how exhausted must those tulips be to have travelled that far through numerous handling and different climatic zones.

Now I love tulips, they are one of my favourite flowers. But not in June! Why buy tulips when you could have sweetpeas, cornflowers, godetia and many many other beautiful English flowers. All grown in the UK, ethically grown, fresh and providing demand for the growing army of independent growers across the country. I'm proud to be part of this network and work hard not just at growing the flowers but I work hard at growing demand for British Grown flowers  

There is a lot of focus in the media at the moment to be proud to be British - and I agree. There is also a lot of focus to be more like our European neighbours - and I agree with that too (spend more on cut flowers!) When shopping at the supermarket do you check where your strawberries for National Picnic Week are from? Do you look for British meat? I'm sure many of you do. Well next time you spend part of your £28 per head on flowers - make sure they are British!

(I'm hosting the Twitter feed for SmallholdersUK this week to help rise awareness of British Flowers - come join in!)

The Friday Photograph - The Cornish One

“I’ll wait for you under the bluebells. I’ll be there always. ”

— Kim Harrison

Cornish Scillas: the cut flower growers Bluebell. With thicker and stronger stems than traditional bluebells, these beauties stand upright and behave themselves in vases and bouquets rather than flopping around everywhere. 

These vibrant blue blooms were grown at Clowance Wood Nurseries in Praze, Cornwall (Flowers by Clowance) And you too can enjoy these in your home as they are featured this week in Church Park Flowers at Johns of Appledore

The Friday Photograph - the Preparation One

“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation”

— Robert H Schuller

I like tidy. I border a little on OCD when it comes to my workspaces. But when there is a big job coming up my workshop seems to shrink and bursts at the seems with buckets, blooms and bouquets. 

This is the unorganised chaos of colour and scent that is currently filling my workshop ahead of a busy floral weekend. Check out the social media channels of Church Park Flowers over the next couple of weeks to see what "spectacular achievement" was created out of this "unspectacular preparation"

instagram / twitter / facebook

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The Friday Photograph - the Good Friday

“I hope everyone that is reading this is having a really good day. And if you are not, just know that in every new minute that passes you have an opportunity to change that. ”

— Gillian Anderson

So today is Good Friday, the day we gorge on hot cross buns knowing there is only another 48 hours until lent is over and we can go back to chocolate, gin, crisps - and all those other things that make us happy! It represents new beginnings and awakenings.  

Without getting too religious on you I did do a quick Google to find out why it was called 'Good' Friday when it's actual biblical roots are rather sorrowful. One school of thought is that it was actually a typo! Previously called 'Gods Friday' (Godos Fruday) a couple of letters got switched and howzat - Good Friday it was! Following this same school of thought maybe in several thousand years Church Park Flowers will become 'Chalk Perch Furrows' or 'Sprawl Chock Fuhrer'! (Visit wordsmith.org for an hilarious anagram generator)

But today is a very Good Friday for me for one key exciting reason. Church Park Flowers are now available to buy at Johns of Instow and Appledore! Two amazing, award winning delis who face each other across the Torridge estuary are now stocking posies and bouquets of locally grown British flowers. This week's selections are true Easter and Springtime tidings of scented narcissi, tulips, ranunculus and sprigs of contorted willow and birch. And as the seasons change then so will the selection of flowers. 

I'm pursuing the opportunity of a new beginning. Get yourself to a Johns deli, buy some flowers and join me in a Good Friday, Great Saturday, Amazing Sunday, Fab Monday........

Apes Therapy! 

(or Happy Easter!)

What a woman really wants for Valentine's.

“Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.”

— John Lennon

Love it or hate it, Valentine's is nearly upon us. The Christmas cards have been cleared from the shelves and replaced by romantic, funny, rude, huge, in your face cards all declaring 'LOVE'. And it's big business now with the Brits spending around £1 billion pounds every year to show how much they care!

If you are strictly in the 'no way' camp, then the sight of these cards fills you with dread. But maybe that is because the idea of synthetic chocolates, synthetic undies and synthetic flowers turns you off the idea of 'love'. 

But what if there was another way? A declaration that is handmade, artisan, locally grown? Something that still symbolises 'love' but is natural, beautiful, seasonal? 

Men have been 'trained' to buy red roses ever since the 17th century when it first became de rigueur to present flowers to their loved one. The ancient Greeks and Romans identified the rose with the goddess of love, Aphrodite / Venus and so the association began, but did you know that the tulip is also a flower with the meaning of love?

The gift of a red or yellow tulip is seen as a declaration of love, the flower's black centre representing a heart burned by passion. And the simplistic, humble daffodil represents purity and new beginnings. Add some scented rosemary for remembrance and suddenly you have a bouquet that spells out a message of Remembering Pure Love. Clinton Cards couldn't write something that good that will also fill the house with scent and the promises of Spring. 

Still not wanting to embrace the Valentine vibe? Well these bouquets are not exclusive to just one day. What greater way to show you care than gifting flowers any day......spontaneously.

Church Park Flowers can create your unique love token with delivery throughout north Devon and north Cornwall including Valentines Day! 

...........autumn sowings

“Every sucessful person I have heard of has done the best he could with the conditions as he found them, and not waited until next year for better”

— E W Howe

E W Howe is apparently an American Author – no I don’t know what they wrote, nor have I managed to look it up. Feel free to educate me in the comments below if you want!

You would have seen by now that I love a quote to set the scene of a situation. It’s quite interesting to look them up and find one that is relevant to my musings at the time. As I am about to talk about autumn sowings then I felt the above was pretty apt as you do have to take advantage of what the weather is doing at the time and not worry too much if it the right thing to do. Yes, we may get severe frosts this year, we may get a cold wet spring but also the weather is set good at the moment so hopefully my new seeds will get off to a good start.

So as my previous blog outlined, this year’s annuals have all but gone. But actually this is not strictly true, I still have a good row of daucus (My little favourite!) Some cleome (Nasty thorns – but actually I will save seed! – give it a chance). Sunflowers still to flower (fingers crossed) and cosmos taking over the polytunnel! Considering its October in a couple of days I am still impressed with the return from a few annual seeds. 

Of course I want the flower patch to work even harder next year so I am kicking off my autumn sowings. By direct sowing half hardy annuals you can hope to get seeds germinating and putting down a good root system ahead of the winter. This will pull them through the hard months and mean they are a bit stronger and ahead of the game come next spring. The result: earlier, stronger blooms available from April and May.

                                               Seeds from the fabulous Higgledy Garden

These last couple of weeks have rewarded us with beautiful weather for late September (thank you!) so have managed to clear, dig and rake over the beds all dedicated for autumn sowing and of course spring bulbs. But what I hadn't realised at the time – so therefore not planned that way – was the current moon phrases. Do you know about lunar gardening? Well Google it as I'm not going into the nitty gritty here but basically Ute York, in her book "Living by the Moon" says

“The old-time gardeners say, "With the waxing of the moon, the earth exhales.” When the sap in the plants rise, the force first goes into the growth above ground. Thus, you should do all activities with plants that bear fruit above ground during a waxing moon. With the waning of the moon, the earth inhales. Then, the sap primarily goes down toward the roots. Thus, the waning moon is a good time for pruning, multiplying, fertilizing, watering, harvesting, and controlling parasites and weeds” 

These same forces affect the water content of the soil, creating more moisture in the soil at the time of the new and full moon. This increased moisture encourages the seeds to sprout and grow. So hopefully I was spot on in my sowing last weekend.

This weekend I also managed to make good headway in the planting of 250 bulbs I had ordered! As the ‘Synodic period of the full moon’ (!) is a good time to sow bulbs (The gravitational pull drives the sap and goodness down through the bulbs) I am very hopeful of an impressive display of anemones du Caen, muscari and paperwhites come next spring.

But in the words of Margaret Mitchell, another American author…..

““Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect””

— Margaret Mitchell