London Florist

Don't pick the Flowers !!

Spring has finally arrived….the bees are humming, the birds are singing and the spring flowers are starting to bloom !  But all beware we are now entering a change of season which brings with it odd human behaviour. Remember from your history lessons  ‘Beware of the Ides of March’ which unfortunately Julius Caesar choose to ignore.

 Well looking at how human behaviour changes once the seasons change, makes me despair & wonder…… it really does!!

Trawling through recent events I came across many articles with the theme of spring, flowers, police and rioting…..what a mind boggling combination of opposing contrasts. An article from the blogger Angela Epstein of the Manchester Evening Post caught my eye, by proclaiming  ‘Daffodil thieves are as bad as London rioters’. For those of you that followed this hugely blown up story from the media, can only shake their heads in despair when a so called ‘reasonable journalist’ tries to link little girls picking daffodils in a park to Anarchists smashing up businesses in central London. Whatever your views on the actions of the little girls picking flowers in a municipal parkand being cautioned by the Police,  there is no way reasonable people should try to link the two……..just to fill up a page in a local paper !! May I suggest to Angela Epstein that instead of sitting in her office trying to cobble together a non story as this,  she should be reporting directly from the next Anarchists riot and maybe a real story might come from her.

On a lighter note,  a very quintessential British story about the election of a Grouville student becoming Jersey’s Miss Battle of Flowers 2011, a post that was created in 1902 as a celebration of the coronation of Edward VII. Ahhhhh don’t stories like this just make you feel good and that in this country we are all as Mad as a March Hare !!

CUTS !!

Having seen the cutbacks made by the corporate sector in 2008/2009 , a wry smile came across my face when I read an article from the Oxford Times. Their headline cried out‘ Floral displays go as council cuts £2.7m’ expecting the readers to think that their council spent that much on flowers & plants !

But seriously the flower trade in general has had it`s first real recession, where both corporate & retail  sectors have seen their trade shrink  as both companies and the public reign back spending. However much the press & especially the florist trade press try to convince us that volumes of fresh flowers are increasing into the UK all I hear from retailers & wholesalers alike is that volumes are well down since the peak of 2008. I know it does not help in the fact that the major multiples have made severe inroads into the florist trade traditional  market, but their is one thing that they are unable to do which if they ever acheive will be the final nail in the trades coffin……provide a service !! While they may be able to sell flowers or get flowers delivered by post(Usually half dead)they cannot provide that bespoke service that the independent florist can, because it does not fit into their productivity costings verses sales. If they ever are able to work that one out then I am afraid the florists will go the way of the high streets other dinosaurs the greengrocer, butchers & fishmonger.