More and more the floral industry is seeing the use of terms such as British Grown, sustainable, eco, seasonal, and the like.

We wanted to write about this for many reasons. Firstly, because it is fantastic that we are seeing an ethos of responsible floristry and growing come to the forefront, hopefully with the customer as the driving force for positive change. However, in some cases it can be deceiving because it is not transparent. For example, British grown tulips, available in February for Valentine’s, are on the whole actually grown in heated green houses, hydroponics systems and sprayed with copious amounts of chemicals by staff members with inadequate protection in order to not only force the bulbs to flower early, but also make sure the flower is perfect and the stem, long. Does this sound eco, sustainable or seasonal?

So there is work to be done on what these terms really mean as well as when it is ok to use them.

We wanted to start by discussing our own transparency around these issues. Watching us grow our own, using no dig and organic practises can be misleading in places.

To get our growing capacity to where we would like it to be in order to be more self sufficient and fulfil weddings for example, completely from our plot, we have a long way to go investing in plants, growing spaces, poly tunnels etc. In order to achieve this, there is the juggle of making profit to invest, profit of off flowers that won’t all be our own... many issues there in itself. Plus, along the way, questions will need to be asked about how much plastic is being used, where our compost is coming from, what packaging and pots are we using etc.

This means that the ideal of being, sustainable, completely British etc is in development. We are not there yet.

We have moved more confidently towards designing weddings and all our work predominantly using our own flowers. Plus we have a better understanding of what size wedding, or any job again, we can accommodate from our plot alone at each point in the year. But certainly for the following year, we most likely will be sharing some of our work that features a proportion of flowers that without being transparent, would very much be green washed.

It is important not to be divisive.

For the florist/designer or grower, let’s work on being transparent when we use this language. We can’t all be growing our own or maybe fulfilling orders from British growers alone, that’s not what I’m asking, but let’s as an industry consider green washing. And to the customer, feel empowered to ask the questions if they are needed... Is this seasonal? How is it grown? Are all of these flowers British? What does British actually mean?