05/04/21 Flower farmers

Farming Today

• Episode: 05/04/21 Flower farmers
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:11:28
• Published: 2021-04-05 07:00

Flower growers have had a tough year. When the pandemic struck, lockdown cost them all their wedding and hospitality business, but there was a big surge in online sales, and with Brexit, renewed interest in home-grown flowers. Flowers from the Farm, a network of British flower producers and suppliers say their membership’s gone up by 25% since the start of lockdown, to more than a thousand members. Over the past year, some businesses have struggled to cope with the demand for flowers, others have reduced the amount they've been planting. Some nurseries laid people off, other growers couldn't recruit enough pickers. We talk to farmers, wholesalers and nurseries to find out how they’ve fared over the past 12 months. Produced and presented by Rebecca Rooney