Why do buzz words like locally-grown, seasonal and chemical-free actually matter?
You may regularly read these words from sustainable flower farmers or other sustainably minded businesses, but is it clear why they are important?
The importance of LOCALLY GROWN
Anything you can buy that is locally grown is better for the environment due to the reduced distance the product has travelled from producer to consumer.
So many products we buy have travelled literally thousands of miles. In order to travel that distance, fossil fuels will have been burnt in the form of petrol/diesel to power planes, ships & lorries. Flowers often arrive into the UK having come from Africa or South America, via the Netherlands. They have travelled a long way and burnt a lot of fossil fuels, polluting the atmosphere with the emissions and adding to the greenhouse effect – the primary cause of climate change. Powering refrigerators during transport to keep flowers cool also requires the combustion of fossil fuels. Considering the flowers will probably die a week or so later, this seems like an unjustifiably high carbon footprint to incur.
The importance of SEASONAL
Growing in line with the seasons means the natural conditions outdoors are suitable for growing that particular product at that particular time. It means the product most likely won’t have required artificial heating or lighting to make it grow. Growing flowers out of season means they are most likely grown indoors in a heated glasshouse, with artificial lighting. How is heat and light generated? You got it, often by burning fossil fuels.
This will not always the case as renewable energy sources could be used, but growing without any energy requirement is obviously better for the environment.
The importance of CHEMICAL-FREE
Using chemicals such as fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides has an impact beyond the target of the application. Spraying a flower with a pesticide to kill one particular pest doesn’t mean that that is the end of the story. Some of the chemical will hit the target and do its intended job, but a lot of it will leak off, finding its way into the soil, into the waterways and then who knows where, killing many more species than the intended target pest. Residues of that chemical will also remain on the flower, a flower which is then handled by multiple people. Is that chemical ending up inside us, and if so, is that having an affect? It’s not clear! The easiest solution is to avoid chemical use altogether.
To conclude
If we consider an average supermarket bunch of flowers, it is likely the flowers are imported and will have travelled a considerable distance from grower to consumer. It is likely they will have been sprayed by a concoction of chemicals, and dependent on where they were grown, they may or may not be seasonal.
In a world where we need to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions, choosing locally grown, seasonal flowers is one simple swap that can be implemented relatively easily. It may be less convenient than the supermarket, but convenience can’t rule forever.
When we started Perfect Patch Flowers our approach was to ask ourselves the following questions whenever we needed something; can we make it using materials we already have? Can we reuse or repurpose something we already own? If not, can we source it second hand and locally? If the answer to all 3 was no, only then would we buy something new. At that point different questions arose, but that’s a blog for another day.
Our approach was partly due to a desire to keep costs down and partly due to a passion for keeping our environmental impact to a minimum, and thankfully the two usually overlap! It’s an ethos I already had to some extent in my day to day life (anyone who knows me knows I LOVE charity shops), but it’s something we are trying to incorporate more and more into all areas of business and life.
Based on what we have learnt; here are our tips for helping the planet and your pocket, some obvious, some maybe less so, but hopefully of some use to someone!
Reuse, reuse, reuse! Whether that’s reusing or repurposing things you already own, or buying second hand, there are lots of options out there:
Look on Facebook Marketplace (basically Facebook’s eBay) and other second-hand selling sites
We have managed to get hold of some amazing second-hand items through Facebook Marketplace – it’s the saving grace of Facebook! Our shed was previously in a garden in Hull, our greenhouse once occupied a garden near Newark and our container workshop was once the site office for a tyre shop! It does often take more work in terms of disassembling and reassembling, but we’d much rather give a perfectly working product a new home rather than see them go to waste!
Speak to local businesses – their waste might be your treasure
The cardboard we use for suppressing weeds are deconstructed cardboard boxes from a local bike shop, our woodchip is the by-product from a local arborist, our 2nd polytunnel frame was previously used by a local garden nursery; they sold it to us when they no longer needed it! A lot of the wood we use is from a local garage door installer who has to remove a lot of old wooden frames as part of the job. Think outside the box in terms of who might be able to help!
Ask friends and family to help you collect things
You never know what people you know might be prepared to save for you, or what they already have and want to get rid of. Toilet rolls, jam jars, newspaper, we’ve had friends and family keeping and collecting all sorts for us. My grandad gave us an old water butt, a friend of a friend was replacing their fence and gave us the old panels, which we’ve subsequently used to make a compost and mulch storage area.
Check out your local charity/antique shops
We are lucky enough to live in Horncastle which seems to be a treasure trove for antique and charity shops. If you have any local to you then pay them a visit and see what awesome and unusual things you can find! We’ve collected a rather large range of vases which we plan to eventually hire out for DIY weddings.
Look out for closing down garden sales – great for sourcing established perennials
We attended a closing down sale of a local walled garden. There were some amazing established perennial plants for sale which might have otherwise gone to waste. Keep an eye out for road side sales too, we picked up a few plants which people were selling locally out of their gardens.
Give DIY a go – see what you can make with what you have
The first thing we did was build a make shift polytunnel out of pallets and old telegraph poles which were kicking around my Dad’s farm. We know we are extremely fortunate to have easy access to a lot of materials which others won’t, but the premise is similar. See what you can make with what you have, using the tools you have. Angus built our greenhouse’s potting table using old pallet wood and a table and bench using wood donated to us by a friend.
Use what nature gave us
Rainwater – If you have any sort of structure then chances are you can use it to collect rainwater, you just need some guttering and a tank!
Compost – Put your garden waste (and food waste) in a pile and watch it turn into an amazing growing medium for your future plants! We know there is more to it than that but we probably aren’t the best people to advise as ours is still a work in progress. There is lots of information out there on making it successfully. Making it yourself also means you can guarantee it is peat-free.
Solar/wind power – We have no mains source of power at our plot so we are looking into solar/wind off-grid options.
DIY fertilizer – Plants themselves are such an amazing source of nutrients. Nettle tea, leaf mould, compost tea are all amazing sources of organic matter for enriching your soil and feeding your plants. Do some research to find out more.
Research regenerative techniques for improving soil health and sequestering carbon.
This is something we are learning more and more about but a couple of regenerative practices include:
– No dig/no till which minimises soil disturbance and prevents carbon stored in the soil from being released into the atmosphere.
– Using cover crops and crop rotation to rebuild organic matter in your soil and increase the living biodiversity, this makes soil healthier and enhances its ability to draw down carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground. Soil is now thought to be the Earth’s biggest potential carbon sink and a vital agent in reversing climate change!
Help the local wildlife
We don’t use any herbicides, pesticides or other chemicals as these can all be hugely harmful to wildlife. Actions to encourage wildlife include creating habitats (hedges, ponds, log piles, bird boxes, insect hotels) or even growing a small wild flower patch can provide vital nectar for pollinators. It’s truly amazing how interconnected nature is. Plants, animals, fungi and the way they all interact are absolutely key in maintaining a habitable planet. Helping one species can indirectly help a whole range of others and the more species we have, the more biodiversity we have, the more stable Earth is for us and future generations.
Education
Sustainability is a humungous topic, one small blog doesn’t do it justice. We’ve acquired a fair bit of knowledge through watching documentaries, reading books and articles and following sustainability focussed Instagram accounts. There are loads of videos and useful podcasts out there too. Our advice would just be to research however best suits your learning style and have an open mind! Feel free to ask us for specific examples!
We have probably missed a whole heap of other sustainable practices you can employ but hopefully we’ve included some useful ideas!
Areas for improvement:
We are by no means perfect and there are many areas we would still like to improve. For example:
Our car and van is diesel. We hope to go electric when we can afford it.
We still use plastic in the form of some seed trays, buckets, pots, polytunnel plastic sheeting, shade netting and landscape fabric. Most of these will be long-standing or re-used to death but we’d still like to cut out more if we can. Soil-blocking is on our agenda!
Our wind breaks are currently in the form of shade netting. Eventually we would like to have foliage/hedging instead. We are in the process but they are relatively slow growing.
We’d like to look into saving more of our own seed to reduce the amount we buy in.
One final note…
Practically everything we do and everything we own impacts the environment in some way. We are often so far removed from cause and effect in the modern day that it is very very easy to never link the two. From the items in our house, to the vehicles we drive, to the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, everything involved in making and getting a product to you, you using that product and then its disposal affects Planet Earth and its inhabitants in some way. Obviously we can’t do nothing and own nothing, therefore sustainability is working towards a way of life which means we do, get, use and dispose of the things we need in the least negatively impactful way. There are however SO many barriers to this, and it’s therefore important to do our best but not to feel guilty if we can’t do EVERYTHING straight away.
Thank you for reading! If anyone has any tips, knowledge or sources of education that they’d like to share with us then we’d LOVE to hear from you!
A couple saw their flower business near Lincoln blossom during the coronavirus lockdown.
Angus Hale, 24, and Beth Alford, 26, had more free time on their hands during lockdown, and started planning their business in March.
It continued to grow over the summer before the couple officially opened their business Perfect Patch Flowers in Branston Fen near the city around two weeks ago.
The couple used one of Beth’s family’s arable fields and they cordoned off a spare plot of land. They built their own polytunnel from recycled materials and started to trial which flowers could be grown in the Lincolnshire fenland.
Angus Hale also works part-time as a horticulturist looking after plants on film and TV sets.
Angus has changed from full-time to part-time at Greens Team Ltd to allow him to work on the new business.
Greens Team Ltd provide natural set dressing for film and TV sets, with Angus looking after the plants on the set of a number of big films including the Star Wars’ movies Rogue One and Episode VII – The Force Awakens, as well as Wonder Woman and The Mummy (2017).
The couple used one of Beth’s family’s arable fields and they cordoned off a spare plot of land.
Beth said: “The idea came about on Mother’s Day after I’d picked up some lovely flowers for my mum.
“Both being keen on living a ‘greener’ lifestyle, we mused on the idea of one day growing and selling our own flowers. Then lockdown happened and the ten-year plan became a ten-week plan.
“Without much deliberation, we basically just threw ourselves into it. We put together a loose business plan, ‘borrowed’ some of my dad’s land and started experimenting with plants and flowers.
A bouquet from Perfect Patch Flowers.
Sample buckets are being delivered to local florists ahead of the 2021 season.
