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!)

Clearing the annuals.....

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

 As summer draws to a close (sorry!) it’s time to say good bye to last year’s annuals. These have been my floral stewards over the last five months and it is a bittersweet exercise when pulling them up.

They have faithfully provided colour, scent and beautiful blooms for all manner of requests over the summer. The birthday bouquets, the thank you bouquets, the blue cornflowers and nigella for the nautical themed weddings, the brighter bolder zinnias for the mid summer buttonholes and the scented sweetpeas nestled in bridal bouquets.

As they are pulled from their spots I make mental notes for next year plantings. Definitely yes to more larkspur - Long lasting stems in mauves, purples, whites and pinks. Save space for the ever favourite cornflowers – the blues win hand down on popularity and vibrancy. Need to include more colours for the antirrhinums. (Only had deep crimson and a few white ‘snapdragons’ this year) Jury still out on the zinnias. They win ‘most colourful annual’ award hands down – but not popular for brides unless the Caribbean them takes off in 2016. Dill flowers will appear again as I love the zingy yellow that works so well with other colour palates and adds a spicy scent to bunches of blooms. Cleome?? What were they thinking when they recommend it as a cut flower? Yes it looks impressive but those thorns?! Really? They are killers on your hands. Don’t want the dry-cleaning bill as they prick the finger of a bride in pure white! Escholias, again look great in the beds – but no real staying power for the vase. Must remember to pinch out cosmos next year as picking from 6 foot high plants is no easy task! The sunflowers are still giving so can stay put for now. As can my years favourite – the daucus. The colour, the shape and the generosity of this annual makes it my current favourite. Still producing well in the outside beds it pairs perfectly with dusky pink hydrangeas that are still looking good. (If anyone is looking for a gift in the next few weeks this would make a fabulous long lasting floral arrangement or bouquet – hint hint).

The nice part about clearing the annuals is that it is not a hard task. No deep roots to dig out you can literally just tug them up and chop them into the compost heaps. So at least they are not wasted on any level. You can then clear some beds in super quick time and get them dug and raked over ready for the next ‘guests’.  ………to be continued