Most flowers sold in shops arrive off long-haul flights covered in chemicals. They are frequently wrapped in plastic and have no scent (and don’t last long). Choose florists that sell local organic seasonal flowers, to help retain heirloom varieties, and provide local jobs. Or learn to grow them yourself.
Keep Pets Safe Near Flowers
Many flowers (including all bulbs and most wildflowers are toxic to pets, so keep them away. Even brushing a tail past a lily can harm. For the same reason, only send plantable greetings cards to pet-free homes.
If growing flowers, use no-dig gardening and learn how to create pet-safe gardens. Avoid facing indoor foliage to gardens, to help stop birds flying into windows.
Where to Buy Seasonal Organic Flowers
Flowers From the Farm lists local indie florists who grow artisan blooms – loved by bees and you!
Organic Blooms is a social enterprise near Bristol,which grows organic flowers, and provides jobs for people with disabilities. Students spend a few days a week training in the flower nursery and florists, to qualify for certification to work within the industry. Many graduates go on to work in horticulture.
These bouquets are good for local wildlife, with out-of-season blooms grown in polytunnels using crop rotation and organic comfrey fertiliser. All packaging is compostable, the range includes buckets of seasonal blooms and sympathy bouquets (from a Gloucestershire flower farm, tied with raffia).
Or if you prefer, donate to ‘buy an organic flower bed’, and you receive a hand-painted sign on one of the flower beds, to acknowledge your donation.
Common Farm Flowers (Somerset) sells local flowers for weddings, to create your floral arrangements (and offers workshops). For collection only, these flowers are locally grown and seasonal, so not available in winter.
Store your flowers in a cool, dark place. Change the water regularly and keep trimming the stems. This reduces bacteria and helps the blooms last.
If only using flowers once (like weddings), you can donate them to charities like Floral Angels that use volunteers to regift them to those who need cheering up.
How to Grow Your Own Organic Flowers
The Land Gardeners is a beautiful book, with information on how to grow over 100 varieties of organic flowers. In this visual diary of life in the garden, the authors share their beliefs on importance of soil health, introduce you to their favourite blooms and inspire you to create your own cutting garden, with expert knowledge on how to grow, and what to gather by season.
Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld both trained as lawyers, before studying garden design. Both specialise in producing walled gardens.
How to Grow Flowers in Small Spaces is a lovely book, very simple in design. Each double-page spread includes information on the flower and what you need and whether it’s suitable for a cutting garden. You’ll also learn how to grow 40 flowers from pincushion flowers to towering lilacs.
Learn how to choose containers and map out your garden space, know when and how long to water flowers, which plants to choose and learn the importance of healthy soil. Includes 40 flowers plus garden layout plans for a pollinator, cottage, cutting and drought-tolerant garden.
Stephanie Walker is a certified master gardener in Arizona, USA, where she grows a flower farm for CSA (community supported agriculture) subscriptions.
A Flower Garden for Pollinators is by BBC Gardener’s World presenter Rachel de Thame, looking at how to provide garden habitats for bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects, by providing plants that are rich in nectar and pollen. Arranged by season and illustrated with hand-painted watercolours and glorious photography, this is ideal for a small urban courtyard to a large country garden. A trained horticulturalist, her latest interest is organic flower farming.
A Beautiful Book of Seasonal Flower Projects
Flower Philosophy is a book of seasonal flower projects to inspire. Find 25 combinations of stems and foliage, with tips for budget-conscious choices (buds, weeds, foliage, fruits and vegetables). Includes an index of often-forgotten blooms.
If arranging flowers, use eco floral foam which is plastic-free. There are now alternatives like volcanic-based fibre-floral, an ideal investment for eco-florists.
Armchair Reads for Flower Gardeners
How The Rose Got Its Thorns gives you the answer to this and other flower mysteries. Why do some plants have shiny leaves, and why are daffodils yellow? Divided into 50 chapters, each easy-to-read chapter looks at the inner workings of four favourite flowers and trees, to help both novice and experienced gardens to better understand how plants grow.
With beautiful colour illustrastions, learn how plants:
- Protect themselves from predators
- Attract pollinators using scent and colour
- Grow in low or high temperatures
- Develop relationships with the wind
- Distribute seeds to survive
- Talk with insects!
- Retain water efficiently
Dr Andrew Ormerod is a botanist with an honours degree in Agricultural Botany and a doctorate in Plant Breeding. He worked at the Eden Project for 15 years and regularly lectures and gives tours.
Where the Old Roses Grow is the story of writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, florist Constance Spry and horticulturalist Graham Stuart Thomas, who together decided to prevent England’s heritage roses from becoming extinct, after the Second World War.
They began to collect rare old roses, while soldiers were away from their gardens. This book tells the extraordinary story of how they did this, while Hitler was advancing on their lives. It celebrates the achievements of a group of people who managed to save one of England’s favourite flowers.
Janelle McCulloch is a journalist who divides her time between England and Australia. She wrote a biography of writer Joan Lindsay, who wrote Picnic at Hanging Rock, about the mysterious disappearance of schoolgirls in Victorian times, made into a film by Peter Weir (who directed the films Witness and Green Card.
Meet Sunflowers (England’s Happiest Flowers!)
Sunflowers are more than big happy annual blooms beloved by Vincent van Gogh. These Native American flowers are loved by bees, due to their wide open faces. Butterflies and beetles also love them. This helps to boost biodiveristy and support healthy ecosystems.
Although sunflowers are listed as nontoxic to dogs, cats and rabbits, it’s best to deter pets eating flowers (a couple of sites say sunflower petals are toxic to guinea pigs).
Sunflowers also help to restore soil, due to big roots that improve drainage. They can even ‘clean the earth’ of heavy metals and pollutants. They are particularly good, if planted in areas with soil erosion.
Some people even say that chewing on sunflower seeds gives the same relaxing effect as nicotine, so some people use them to give up smoking (better than chewing gum, that just litters pet-toxic xylitol all over our pavements).
If you want to grow some sunny happy flowers, plant them where they will get six hours of direct sun each day (the clue’s in the name!) They prefer well-drained soil with occasional watering. Make sure they are well spaced-out, as they grow big and tall.
Aphids like sunflowers, so grow organically to encourage ladybirds, which naturally prey on aphids. Ensure regular watering at the base and good air circulation, to prevent powdery mildew.
Sunflower heads are actually a series of small flowers with the seeds self-pollinating (if not be bees). They can reach 16 feet heigh! They are so clever, they do a neat trick called heliotropism, so follow the sun (from east in the morning).
Wordsworth’s Cheerful Spring-Flowering Bulbs
Daffodils are spring flowers, but they do have a much longer growing season in the Isles of Scilly. The favourite flower of many for their cheery yellow blooms, they were brought to England by the Romans and often bloom around tree roots as the days grow warmer.
Don’t pick wild daffodils or in parks, as it’s illegal. It’s actually a better idea for parks to plant more pet-safe flowers, rather than pet-toxic bulbs anyway. Like all bulbs, daffodils are unsafe near animals (including horses).
In the Catholic faith, they are often called ‘Lent lilies’ as this is when they tend to bloom, during the Easter fast. In Wales, they are known as ‘Peter’s leek’.
For pet-free homes, ensure you soak them in water for 24 hours to remove the poisonous sap, if displaying with other flowers in a vase. The largest producer of daffodils is Cornwall, and there is present research into one chemical in daffodils, which could help to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s.
Cumbrian poet William Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy in the town of Grasmere, now more known for its gingerbread. His famed poem was inspired when he and Dorothy were walking the shores of Ullswater, near their home at Dove Cottage:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
How Well Do You Know England’s Other Flowers?
Here’s a quick list!
-
- Anemones
- Bluebells
- Campunala
- Cornflowers
- Daisies
- Daffodils
- Dog rose
- Forget-me-not
- Foxgloves
- Fritallery
- Gentians
- Harebell
- Hellebores
- Honeysuckle
- Lilies
- Narcissus
- Orchids
- Roses
- Snowdrops
- Sunflowers
- Thistle
- Tulips
- Violets
Beautiful Flower Seed Kits for Small Spaces
Herboo makes seed kits for small spaces, like outside the front door or in a porch. The founder was inspired by his Granny, who would take him to open gardens, pocket a seedling or two, and grow something when back home. She also taught him all she knew, about plants.
The kits all include clear instructions and are designed and prepared in London, to inspire those who have limited space. An emphasis is on organic seeds where possible, and the seeds are packed in moisture-free foil sachets, inside easy-to-recycle sleeves.
Herboo recommends sowing seeds in small batches. That way if something goes wrong, you have enough left to have another go!
The range includes:
Love Seed Kit grows beautiful blooms renowned for love and affection. Contains forget-me-not, phlox ‘blushing bride’ and poppy.
Edible Flowers Kit offer easy-blooms for your cooking including calendular, nasturtium and cornflower. Also good for decorating cakes!
Plant Pots Made from Ocean Waste
Ocean Plastic Pots (Scotland) were created by a deep-sea diver after a sperm whale washed up on the Isle of Harris, near to where he was working on the salvage of a cargo ship, carrying 2000 tons of plastic waste. The whale was later found to have 100kg of fishing and plastic waste in his tummy.
Ghost fishing gear makes up 10% of ocean waste, killing hundreds of thousands of marine creatures. Volunteer to help remove ghost fishing waste.
These pots are frostproof and last years, then easily recycled. Naturally coloured due to the rope and net, they have a hole at the bottom. Buy the matching trowel for no-dig garden projects.
Rope is the main reason for whales becoming entangled in Scottish waters. Just 1 inch of polypropylene rope can lift a double-decker bus, and has a breaking strain of 11 tonnes.
Ecotribo is a fab brand of eco-friendly plant pots, made from recycling fishing waste. And even made with solar power, in lovely colours and patterns. Made in the hip green city of Bristol.
Each pot includes a scannable QR code, so you can learn the journey of how your plastic pot came to be, while saving marine creatures from Cornish and Scottish fishing waste. This brand was founded by a surfer (they tend to be a pretty eco-friendly lot), this case he is from South Africa.
Plant Pots that Water Themselves!
POTR is a range of pots born out of playing around with origami (the Japanese art of paper folding). It ended up as a company making plant pots and vases that water themselves!
Unlike concrete or ceramic plant pots and vases, these won’t break if you knock or drop them. They also can be folded to post through the letterbox, so are far easier to buy and send. And better yet, they are made from recycled materials, including ghost fishing waste.
Because they are super-clever! The self-watering system basically self-regulates its own water intake. Ideal if you are away for a couple of days, or very forgetful. Once you have assembled the pot, just add water, insert the wicking straw into the soil, and watch your plants thrive! The wicking cord can keep plants hydrated for up to 3 weeks, if needed.
The POTR vase is sent through the letterbox, then springs into life, as soon as you open it. It contains a little silicone and is tall and stable enough to hold a litre of water to support a full bouquet of flowers. The soft silicone rim is kind to flower stems.
