British Flowers Week - Why grow your own

Other than being a very enjoyable hobby, I also grow my own flowers for the same environmental reasons as people grow their own food. The British cutflower industry apparently is worth £2 Billion, but about 90% of our cutflowers are imported, often by airfreight from far away tropical places. In the meantime, local growers are often struggling. If we're thinking about foodmiles, then we should also think about flowermiles. What goes for our food, also applies to our flowers. If you wish to reduce the environmental impact of your floral passion you need to buy local, seasonal and, if you can, grow your own.

This is exactly what British Flower week is all about. It is a week‐long celebration of the wealth and variety of the Best of British cut flowers and foliage, championed by New Covent Garden Flower Market. You can follow the campaign on twitter with #BritishFlowersWeek with many growers and amateurs like myself participating. 

This week I hope -busy with all sorts of things, so no promises- to cut a bunch of flowers every day. I've cheated for this post, as I actually cut a bunch on Friday, but didn't write about it. On purpose, because I'd like to show how you can use flowers that have a short vase life in a bunch with others that have a longer vase life. 

This is my bunch on Friday. It has Achillea millefolium 'Cassis', Achillea ptarmica 'Double Diamond' (which needs to be dipped in boiled water for about 10 seconds), white Love-in-a-mist and Papaver somniferum 'Black Beauty'. Poppies are notorious for not having any vase life, but this doesn't have to be an issue as long as you don't think of your flowers being static. All of these I picked from the flower garden, so not from any specific cut flower beds.

As you can see in this picture from Friday, the Love-in-a-mist are also nearing the end of the flowers, but their seedheads are just as pretty and decorative and provide great foliage. The same will go for the poppies once they are finished flowering, as you will see. 

This is the bunch on Saturday.

On Sunday one of the poppies had opened fully.

Today, Monday, the same poppy was obviously way past its best, like all the Love-in-a-mist.

So I gave the bunch a bit of a shake and removed the black petals. I adjusted the stems a bit and you'd never be able to tell. Apart from the evidence on the table of course, but that's only in the picture for illustrative purposes!