The flower fields
Photographer Tessa Bunney, who has been photographing rural life for more than 25 years, captures the work of flower farmers and pickers around Spalding, Lincolnshire
The British love affair with flowers is intense. A casual trawl through social media feeds shows that flowers come freighted with love and hope, perhaps even more so during the pandemic year of 2020, when a simple bouquet stood in for the human contact we were forbidden. From the overlooked wildflowers growing in the scrubby margins of our cities to the flower that most symbolises the garden in high summer – the scented rose – people were appreciating flowers afresh, a sign of renewal in a world that seemed to be so full of despair.
We’ve been buying bunches of flowers for our delight for centuries, but it was only in around 1800, when transport links improved significantly, that it became possible to pick flowers, take them to market and sell them within the space of a few days. Violets, snowdrops and daffodils all made their way to flower markets in our towns and cities, and as the country became increasingly prosperous, more exotic flowers replaced the simple country blooms.
The vast majority of the flowers now grown here originated from other parts of the world, brought back during the 18th and 19th centuries by plant hunters who collected, preserved, then sent back their specimens to places such as Kew Gardens and the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh to be propagated and distributed to wealthy, wellconnected plant collectors. Flowers
had cachet. ‘Florists’ were then mainly men, committed, ingenious and highly competitive growers of specifically bred ornamental flowers such as auriculas, tulips and carnations with their own societies, shows and jealously guarded professional standards.
Throughout the 20th century, the majority of flowers sold in the UK were home grown on hundreds of market gardens and family farms. For most of these small growers, the death knell came after the global expansion of the flower market in the early 1980s, which coincided with the relative decrease in the cost of air freight. Now, when you buy a rose it’s more likely to have been grown in Kenya than Kent. Although a few businesses clung on, fighting labour costs and low margins, seasonality went out the window and flowers became as ubiquitous as tomatoes. The growers who weathered the storm were forced to diversify into more lucrative and sustainable cash crops and much of the expertise in growing was lost. By the turn of this century, UK flower production was confined to a small number of growers specialising in flowers such as tulips, irises, sunflowers and narcissi, mainly grown under glass, many using hydroponic technology (where plants are grown without soil and fed using a mineral- and nutrient-rich solution) and selling through supermarkets.
In the past five years, a rise in small artisan growers has countered this narrative of decline and although their colourful flower fields often grab the headlines, they hide the few large-scale flower growers who’ve been quietly diversifying, mechanising and growing hectares of flowers instead of more traditional crops. But the past few years have seen significant challenges to these growers. The Brexit vote in June 2016 was the first distant rumble of trouble. Flowers are a highly perishable product,
needing quick and efficient picking and transportation at certain times of the year, which often relies on seasonal migrant labour from Europe. As it became obvious that free travel between member states would end when the UK left the EU, growers started to panic about how this would affect their ability to harvest their flowers. ‘Brexit is a disaster for most of us,’ one Lincolnshire-based grower told me at the time. ‘It’s not just the seasonal labour, it’s also the fact that when we leave on 1 January 2021 we’ll have to pay VAT and tariffs on imports such as tulip bulbs from Holland, which will significantly increase our costs.’ But 2019’s general uncertainty and gloom about Brexit was as nothing compared to what was to come in March 2020. The UK’s sudden lockdown as a result of the coronavirus pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time. The income from flower growing flows in from April to October, so most growers had just gone through their leanest months financially, made significant investment in stock, such as bulbs, and were expecting to reap the rewards when everything shut down overnight.
Mother’s Day, a time when millions of bunches flowers would usually be sold, came on 23 March, the very weekend of lockdown. Instead of brightly coloured bouquets adorning the shops, photographs of millions of dead cut tulips being bulldozed and thrown into landfill circulated around the world. Easter was in early April and the situation was little better. ‘There was no-one to pick and no market to sell to,’ said one tulip grower who had to throw away more than half a million cut stems during the first fortnight of lockdown.
Slowly, however, the situation improved as flowers became a way of communicating with friends and relatives at a time when social isolation was the law. By mid-April, demand had bounced
back and, in some cases, even exceeded the previous year. ‘We sold everything we grew and although every week things felt on a knife edge, we got through.’ Despite the demand, most growers lost between £25,000 and £100,000 because of the lockdown and many more have been left feeling bruised and uncertain about the future.
We’ve enjoyed a cheap and abundant supply of flowers all year round for more than 40 years, but in embracing the global, we’ve lost the local. The wholesale cost of producing flowers will undoubtedly rise as a result of Brexit, but growers are repeatedly told by the supermarkets that they won’t be passing on extra production costs to their customers. That’s us. Once, flowers were a little bit of affordable luxury. Now, they scarcely represent their production costs, cheaper than a Friday night takeaway. But what we’re in danger of losing isn’t only expertise in cultivation that has been built up over decades, but family businesses who support much more than their own bank balance.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that the local isn’t immune to the global, and that both must be valued and nourished. It was a year for noticing the natural world, from the park to the hedgerow to the garden. Growers across the country are hoping that the next time you buy a bunch of flowers, you’ll think not just of the cost, but of the human hands that have patiently grown, picked and transported them so that you can admire them on your kitchen table.