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A beautiful bouquet of flowers can really boost your mood, but have you thought about their environmental impact? It might be easy to pick up a bunch of flowers at the supermarket, but around 85% of the flowers in our supermarkets and wholesalers are imported from places like Holland, Ecuador, Colombia, Kenya and Ethiopia. What is the problem with imported flowers? Some of the most impactful issues come use of chemicals to prolong the life of the blooms as they get from their source to us 1000s of miles away. These chemicals can cause pollution from chemical runoff and habitat degradation as well as pose a risk to the health of the pickers and then of course there is the high carbon footprint of global transportation. In fact, according to research carried out Rebecca Swinn of Lancaster University, a bouquet of field-grown flowers from a small grower in the UK has a carbon footprint of only 5% that of the Dutch or Kenyan grown bouquet.
In this episode I’m exploring the sustainability of cut flowers. My guest is Fiona Porter, a cut flower grower from the Cotswolds in England. We discuss just what the problem is, how best to source sustainably grown flowers and what you can do to start growing a few flowers for cutting in your own garden.
More from this Episode
Fiona and I put together a handy little pdf for you with 6 Top tips on growing cut flowers + what to plant when for beginners. You can download it below.
We talk about Flowers From the Farm, an award-winning membership association championing artisan growers of seasonal, scented, locally grown British cut flowers. You can search their directory to find British flower growers close to you.
You can follow Fiona on Instagram here and learn more about her growing workshops and Freshly picked seasonal British flowers for special occasions… or just because on her Cotswold Country Flowers website here.
