In the space of days both UK based Freddie’s Flowers and Spanish based Colvin announced nearly £100m in investment. Coming hot on the heels of the Bloom & Wild new investment of circa £70 million earlier this year and you could, whether you were a small independent or another online player working the digital routes to market, bea a tad worried ..read more

Confess I was hugely saddened to see some fairly nasty comments on the Facebook about the new American based flower competition Full Bloom which made its UK debut 12th July. Fortunately, they were totally outweighed by the positives but it demonstrated just how much divide there is amongst the industry between the various ‘florists’ we have. Because it's not new.  It happened at the British Flowers Week event as well. Some florists were described as High End … others as High Street … the implication being that one was better than the other. Self-taught (bit of a nonsense phrase really be ..read more

No, I haven't joined the Ministry of Silly Walks ... the flower bedecked Bowler was all to do with the #wearaflowerhat initiative the Good Florist Guide members got involved with and I just couldn't resist joining in! ** But actually the last two weeks have been all about the flowers and I have taken or worked on hundreds of pictures .... all featuring work from florists around the country, from all parts of the industry and in all sorts of different ways ... supported by some equally awesome wholesalers too! And it's not just been big name personalities. This flower fest has been across the b ..read more

I first wrote this back in 2016!  Five years later I may have had to change some of the shop names I referenced as they have gone bust (!!) but I stick by the rest. Because yet again totally unrealistic pricing points are being mentioned for funerals and in my opinion letter tributes CANNOT cost anything less than £35 per letter. In fact, with prices they are at the moment I really don't think they can be sold for less than £45 - 50 ..read more

In my other life I am President of my local Women's Insitute (WI).  It’s a completely different world (I got to meet the original calender girls at the 100th Birthday party at Buckingham Palace - me and them above - and have even made jam!) but one thing is constant … we all love flowers ... just maybe not from the same places!  ..read more

And here we are.  Another month.  In the UK another fall in  Covid numbers and a road map that, on the face of it, should bring back normality but in other parts of the world it's totally different!!  However,  wherever we may be based, normality still seems a jolly long way off ..read more

I'll explain the headline in a minute but first I'm going to be honest and say I HATED Valentine’s Day when I had shops. It always seemed so bally last minute not to mention painful on the hands ... in my day it was ALL red roses so blood was spilled on more than one occasion!! This year it took the biscuit and not just the UK. Speaking to florists and suppliers around the world, whilst many said it was fab there were also an awful lot who were either burned ... or frostbitten ... as sky-high prices took out the profit whilst snow, ice and storms took out the delivery trucks. In fact, the whol ..read more

As we celebrate 1.2.21 have to say I thought January was dreary beyond belief!  In fact at one point I reached for the bottle (of hair dye I hasten to add!) before a friend firmly told me to step away!  ..read more

Whilst everyone expected the announcements from Nicola and Boris yesterday (in the same way Macron, Merkle and Mark Rutte et al have had to issue hard rules) and it’s all a bit dreary (first understatement of the year!) I refuse to get totally doom and gloomy ..read more

And that's a wrap ... well bar the shouting and that's probably someone who left it till the last minute and can’t understand why they can’t get exactly what they want on Christmas Eve ..read more