A.E.Harnett & Sons Market Stall at Columbia Road, from Greenacre Lane, Stock, Ingatestone Essex
Every Sunday morning at Columbia Road Flower market, Hackney London. Probably one of London's most hip and trendy East End markets. The ambience is great, packed full with people who love and want to buy flowers, you can hardly move.
British local flowers, grown nearby, count for around 10% of the UK market, traveling less than a tenth of their foreign counterparts which are often flown in from abroad. Nearly 90% of the flowers sold in the UK are actually imported, and many travel over 3000 miles. Local flower farms help biodiversity, providing food and habitat to a huge variety of wildlife, insects including butterflies, bugs, and bees. Often local flower farmers prefer to grow organic rather than using pesticides. British flowers bloom all the year around, even in the depths of winter, and there are local flower farms throughout the country.
Many people like the idea of the just picked from the garden look, and come to flower farms throughout Britain to pick their own for weddings, parties and garden fetes. Others come for the joy of a day out in the countryside with their family. Often a bride and her family will come to pick the flowers for her own wedding, some even plant the seeds earlier in the year.