Florist News

well good luck with it , i hope you do really well, it's nice to be able to do something you enjoy and make a few bob from it as well

We need more English growers. We buy all our foliage from England our paperwhites and our sweet peas too. The prices are very good now and we will be sourcing as much as we can from now on. Go for it! Good Luck

__________________
Rochesters favourite!

www.drurysflorist.co.uk

We grow a lot from seed but I do have a large polytunnel, but the other thing we have made good money from is by buying plugs growing them on and selling them, on average it is about 22p for a plug which is a good profit margin when you are selling plants at about £1.50.

Ah thats interesting to know. My friend has greenhouses we could use and she's a gardener so my poo fingers wont go anywhere near them until they are ready Where do you buy the plugs from? Garden centre or wholesale?

There are growers all over the UK that do them, one company is Kernock Plants in Cornwall, they send them out by mail order the quality is brilliant, there is another one in Warwick but I can't remember the name. I know when we were doing it full time we used to get through around six thousand plugs, the other that we do is hanging baskets might be hard to sell in towns but we refill a couple of hundred each year.

Thank you. Will have a look for them. Dont think I'll shift quite that many though

Hi, i'm a home worker florist and try to specialise in British Grown Flowers and foliage. I grow a few things now on a small scale and I am also planning to expand this area this year. A book I found interesting was by Sarah Raven and is titled 'Grow your own cut flowers'.

Sarah is also an advocate of British Grown and an episode of Gardeners World was dedicated to this subject a couple of years ago presented by Sarah, you may be able to still view it online via the BBC website.

From my point of view as a florist/small scale grower, I would stick to seasonal flowers which in theory are easier to grow and cost effective and let the specialist growers provide roses, orchids etc.

I hope this helps and good luck with it. I would be interested in hearing how you are getting on

Before I started working in the Florists shop I had a nursery with poly tunnels where I grew bedding & perrenial plants. My problem was that they all came into flower at the same time & created a glut which I couldn't sell. Make sure you have a customers for your cut flowers, cos it's heartbreaking if all the effort of growing them is in vain.