floral designer Ellie
image by Laura Williams Photography
Our Sustainability oath:
Grown not flown
Seasonal Blooms
Plastic
Soil
Waste
We Grow as many of your event blooms as we possibly can on our flower farm, anything we don't grow ourselves we buy from our local network of fellow flower farmers. That's it! Nothing flown all locally and lovingly grown.
The Guardian in 2019 reported 86% of flowers purchased in the UK are imported, the stems you see in our supermarkets and from wholesale floral supply stockists travel from as far away as Ecuador, Kenya and Holland. Each flower's Co2 and water footprint is hugely increased in these methods and it becomes very negative to the environment. Imagine such a natural product being a detriment to the environment. The mind boggles.
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Seasonal means grown naturally using low environmental impact methods, within the parameters of the natural seasons. Working with the eb and flow of what the different season offer us in floral and foliage bounty.
We use entirely beautiful and abundant seasonal blooms in our work and during the colder months when flowers are low on the ground, we make the most of the varieties available, stack arrangements with a wealth of gorgeous British foliage, dried flowers, seed heads, lichen branches... dreamy!
Why choose seasonal blooms?
Like anything flowers can be mass produced. In the instance of flowers artificial environments are created to encourage a much longer growing seasons and "perfect" blooms. This process uses chemicals, energy and takes a natural product and makes it unnatural.
We do not use single use plastic in our work. Our flowers will never come wrapped in celeophane and we will never use floral foam which is a non biodegradable mirco-plastic. We use wire, twine or paper tape in place of celotape and cable ties.
All our reusable plastics are well looked after and reused again and again. When we buy new we look for non plastic alternatives.
We are a small scale agroecological flower farm and are constantly growing our knowledge on better more sustainable and environmentally beneficial ways to grow our flowers and support the soil we grow on. . We grow without chemicals. We use regenerative farming methods to build our soils and allow them to be a vibrant, self replenishing and living ecosystem. I have planted a mix of trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals each bringing different benefits to our growing space. We leave the soil as undisturbed as possible using no dig methods which avoid breaking through past the top soil, when soil is dug/tilled this releases carbon into the atmosphere, disturbs the soil food web and micro organisms living beneath the surface. We make our own compost or use locally made peat free compost, manure from our neighbouring horses and straw from our neighbouring fields as mulches for our beds. Soil is not left bare but planted with green manures- feeding crops that nourish the soil and strengthen our flowers. We welcome nature and biodiversity (except rabbits!).
We do not waste stems, anything left over or extra is dried and used within our work or composted to feed the soil and grow next seasons flowers. We save dried stems for out of season (October - April) work-.
We live by the mantra reduce, reuse, recycle... an oldie but a goodie!
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