Autumn
Volume 2
Welcome to the online edition of Autumn.
For this edition, we go back to 1859 and a catastrophic storm which battered the Irish Sea and claimed the lives of 800 people. It was also the catalyst which spurred into being what is now the Met Office and the BBC's Shipping Forecast
The market in the UK for cut flowers was worth £1.7 billion in 2023 with around 89% of the produce imported via Holland.
Flowers can travel huge distances in refrigerated transport from large-scale commercial growers in countries as far away as Columbia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Ecuador. The carbon footprint of a bouquet of imported flowers is estimated to be 20 times higher than a UK-grown bouquet.
Couple this with the use of pesticides, some of which are banned in this country, and their environmental impact lives on long after we add them to our compost.
When Fleur Ketley came to a crossroads in her career she and her partner Mark Ashman saw an opportunity to strike a different path and start a business that actively works against the environmental toll of the global flower farming industry.
