This month Instagram is all about roses, feed’s are full of #rose posts featuring beautiful blooms (22,119, 749 hastags to date, check out Jaclyn Craigs‘ feed for daily rose inspo). And last month we (and Insta) were obsessed with peonies- bold and beautiful in equal measure. These two flowers represent the two sides to our business.
We’re a small family owned buiness, we grow and dry most of the flowers we use to make our products. Our roses are cut from our garden in Norfolk (and sometimes the neighbours’ gardens too!). We have around 17 rose bushes- some new, some very old. We have white, pink, orange, peach, yellow and red. Some of the little buds are no bigger than a five pence piece and some as large as a golf ball. We dry them in small batches and use them throughout the year. They’re homegrown and small scale.
By contrast our peonies are grown by my brother in a village called Parsons Drove (hence the name). Still on a relatively small scale compared to some but approx 2000 peonies in white, light pink and deep berry. We dry and store enough peonies to keep us going for the coming year but the majority are sent to the flower markets as fresh flowers (Spitalfields, Covent Garden, Brimingham etc). So the next time you’re scrowling through Insta Stories admiring pretty peonies, they might just be ours!
