We are very pleased that The Flower Grower Collective (FGC) has been awarded funding through the prestigious Farming Innovation Programme. This exciting research project – co-funded by Innovate UK and Defra – is being led by flower farmers Zanna Hoskins (Spindle Flowers) and Debbie Scott (East Lothian Flower Farm), in collaboration with the University of Surrey and Coventry University, and is aimed at exploring new ways to strengthen local flower-growing networks and boost sustainable practices within the industry.
While small-scale flower farmers have been steadily, and impressively, increasing their market share over the past decade, the current mass-production model – with its high energy use greenhouse heating, chillers, agrochemical pollution, water use, packaging, and often the added carbon footprint of air freighting – is continuing to fuel the environmental crisis. Having said that, there is increasing interest from the general public (and therefore from florists,event and wedding organisers) to source locally-grown flowers.
The Scottish Flower Grower Collective began in 2018 as a group of growers looking for more efficient routes to get their flowers to local florists using short supply networks.
With support from Scottish Enterprise, eight growers committed to working collaboratively to explore how to overcome the many challenges faced by small artisan growers. After many surveys, focus groups, meetings and endless research, in 2023 the Scottish group began to work on an online buying platform. Simultaneously, growers from across the country were exploring similar routes to market. One of these growers, Zanna Hoskins from Spindle Flowers, approached the OFN team with the idea of an Open Flower Network.
The OFN offers an opportunity to build wholesale local flower networks with hubs connecting the growers directly to the buyers such as florists and event/wedding organisers. The FGC hubs are not available to retail customers and are not publicly searchable. If you would like to be a wholesale customer please contact flowergrowercollective@gmail.com
One of the early obstacles was the need to replace the ‘food’ branding with ‘flower’ branding. Zanna sourced some funding that allowed the OFN development team to develop white labelling functionality which allows any OFN shopfront to replace the OFN logo and name with their own branding – like this:
As OFN is a global open source platform, this new functionality is now benefitting growers and farmers in all OFN countries who want to rebrand their shopfronts – thanks Zanna!
The other benefit of a global cooperative is that flower growers in Canada have been using the OFN platform for years (see this video) and the OFN Canada team were happy to share their experience which has been formative to the growth of the UK flower network. However as the Canadians had already taken the Open Flower Network name, the UK name was changed to the Flower Grower Collective – this is their new website.
There was a lot of excitement from flower growers across the UK interested in selling their product into flower hubs using the OFN platform. The two main geographical concentrations of growers were in south east Scotland and Dorset. So in 2024 Zanna and Debbie Scott of East Lothian Flower Farm set up two flower hubs (Scottish Flower Growers Collective and South West Flower Growers Collective) and developed systems to onboard flower growers to their hubs. These hubs were so successful that the Flower Grower Collective was inundated by requests from other groups of florists wanting to join.
In order not grow too fast FGC set up a careful recruitment process and has selected three new hubs to start trading in April2025:
- York
- Colchester
- North West (near Manchester)
One of the Kent growers who did not get through the 2025 selection process was so disappointed that she set up independently on the OFN and will be trading this year in the hope of joining FGC next year.
Zanna Hoskins says ‘By establishing more and more regional FGC hubs on the OFN, we are making it much easier for florists to source sustainably grown British flowers. At the moment polls show that there is demand from florists for the unusual varieties, the high quality, the freshness, and the scents & textures of locally grown flowers & foliage. However, florists mostly rely on mass-produced products due to fragmented access to alternatives.
‘The shared knowledge of the project partners in all parts of the supply chain, from the OFN platform co-op to growers, florists and data collected from users of the 5 new Flower Grower Collective hubs across the UK will ensure that there is not only a fair price but crucially a seat at the table for small-scale growers in future British Floristry Industry discussions.’
