British flower power: how home-grown blooms can compete with cheap imports

The UK spends more than 2bn on cut flowers per year, but around 90% are imported. Now a new breed of growers are determined to grab more of that market, by persuading the public that local and seasonal are the ways to go

Georgie Newbery sometimes has to dodge a hunting barn owl when she rises at 5am to harvest flowers on her seven-acre plot near Wincanton in Somerset. Picking sweet rocket, foxgloves and cornflowers as dawn light streaks over the fields may sound idyllic, but grabbing a cup of tea on a late-May afternoon after despatching her exclusively British-grown posies and bouquets, Newbery laughs at the thought. "If you imagine it's all standing around in a flower garden with a Roberts radio and a robin singing, you couldn't be more wrong," she says, possibly a little tartly.

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