'The flowers don't know we're in lockdown': farm donates blooms to key workers

The Electric Daisy Flower Farm’s business relied on selling its blooms grown near Bath at a newly opened shop in Hampstead, north London.

But, as the managing director, Fiona Haser Bizony, says: “The flowers don’t know we’re in a lockdown.”

The shop – only open since February – closed on 17 March with an abundance of unsold flowers.

“And they keep on growing,” Bizony says. “On the day we closed the shop, all the spring flowers that were delivered from our farm to London, I decided to give away to anyone who happened to pass by.”

After Bizony saw an article about how a Dutch market was dealing with the same problem, she decided to donate bouquets of flowers to key workers at the Royal United hospital in Bath, and others to the care home where her mother lives. Other key workers are also receiving them and they have been donated to funerals.

“The RUH was the first drop-off, and then we went to doctors’ practices and care homes, and anyone we could find who needed flowers,” she says.

Dr Benjamin Clayton, from one of the Covid wards at the RUH, says the flowers “really helped to lift our spirits, and I’m incredibly grateful”.

Bizony, who has been growing flowers for six years, has also delivered a bunch to Alexandra Knaggs after her recent home birth.

“We gave her a huge bouquet of spring flowers,” she says. “Tulips and anemone and ranunculus. It was bright and colourful and very scented.” Knaggs says she and her newborn daughter appreciated the “wonderful luxury” of the gift.

Despite the future being unclear, Bizony hopes to send more bouquets to frontline staff. “The bulbs have been planted and we have just put manure on to the rose beds because we’ll need the roses in time for June,” she says.

But she is unsure of what will happen to the shop in the future.

“We have to see what the government says. Horticulture is quite a difficult thing anyway, it’s like snakes and ladders.

“You have just gone up a ladder and feel really pleased with yourself, and then end up coming back down a snake.”