Flower farms flourish as buyers favour homegrown

Rising demand for homegrown cut flowers has prompted a proliferation of businesses in south-west England.

Trade body Flowers from the Farm said about 240 of its 1,100 members were from Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, in a sector it estimated brought £30m a year to the UK economy.

Georgie Newbery set up the organisation after starting her own flower business and watching the industry grow. She said there had been a "huge increase in demand for locally grown flowers".

"The customer has really woken up to this fact. They want high quality and they want sustainability."

Devon Chamber of Commerce said flower farms played an important role in "supporting both local enterprise and sustainable land use".

Newbery, who farms near Bruton in Somerset, said there had been a "huge increase in demand for locally grown flowers" in recent years.

She said: "When I started growing flowers for sale 16 years ago, there were very few people like me in the whole country. I could find maybe five of us, and now there are over 1,100."

Despite the homegrown industry's growth, the UK market relies heavily on imported flowers and foliage, according to Newbery.

"We import 85% of the flower foliage that we buy at market into the UK."

She said that highlighted the potential for more flowers and foliage to be grown domestically, helping to keep spending and employment within rural communities.

"The more that we can grow ourselves, the more we keep that money in the UK, the more we keep that money in the South West, the more employment there will be in the South West."

Newbery said flower farming could also provide opportunities for farmers looking to diversify.

"Flowers are worth more than cabbages," she said.

At Petalon Farm, near Newquay, Florence and James Kennedy are among the growers helping to meet rising demand for locally produced flowers.

"We're just trying to grow interesting varieties of different flowers for our bouquets, so they're always a bit unusual and using things that you might not necessarily have heard of before," Florence said.

The farm grows hundreds of flower varieties for bouquets sold across the UK, with crops planted throughout the year to extend the season for locally grown flowers. Some are also dried for use in winter arrangements.

"We want to be able to offer Cornish flowers for as much of the year as possible," she added.

The number of flowers cut on the farm has grown significantly in recent years.

"We've sort of gone from having a couple of beds and cutting a few hundred flowers for a few weeks of the year, to, at this point in time, we're cutting about 15,000 flowers a week," James said.

The weather conditions of 2026 have seen fluctuating temperatures, a very wet winter and the hottest summer on record, creating difficult growing conditions for all farmers.

Cornish growers can often receive some respite from the worst of winter, James said.

"We're quite close to the sea, but not so close that you get the salty air, so we get very few frosts. We wouldn't typically have a hard frost in a winter here on the farm and that allows us to grow things that other people can't."

In East Devon, Amanda Buckley runs the Wild & Verdant Flower Farm with her friend Kim and said she was "incredibly proud of what our little flower farm has become".

"We started growing flowers simply for the pleasure of it, but what began as a hobby turned into launching in spring 2025," Buckley said.

They rent a plot in the Blackdown Hills and said "the farm is really beginning to thrive" in its second season.

"This year has brought lots of new customers and a real sense that more people are discovering locally grown British flowers.

"They love the quality and seasonality, but increasingly understand the wider benefits too - supporting biodiversity, small local businesses and the local economy."

Devon Chamber of Commerce said flower farming makes a "significant contribution to diversity within agriculture" with businesses across the county supplying weddings, events, florists, wholesale markets, and direct-to-consumer sales.

It added: "The sector supports local jobs, generates income for rural communities, and contributes to the diversity and resilience of our agricultural economy.

"Recent recognition of the sector through dedicated industry classification codes is a positive step towards improving understanding of its economic contribution and future growth potential."

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