The odds on us having a white Christmas are sadly not very high, but we can 100% offer you these wonderful ‘snowball’ chrysanthemums instead. These ‘exhibition’ mums have been expertly grown in Suffolk by a family-run nursery and they are the showiest of the flowerhead forms. Chrysanthemums are a very popular cut flower and were first cultivated in China 1500 years BC. By the 1630s, 500 different cultivars were recorded. Nowadays, there’s more than 20,000 cultivars.
As this is our last arrangement of 2023, we hope you enjoy it. We wish you a lovely Christmas and we look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
Before we wrap and pack our MeadowSweet posies for UK deliveries, our flowers have been expertly conditioned and arranged into our signature 'spiral-bound' short-stemmed bouquets (we call them 'posies') by trained florists and the cut stems are specially-wrapped to stay hydrated for their journey. In this way, we are different from other online flower subscription services who typically send loose, dry stems for customers to assemble themselves.It seems to us that the creative work of experienced florists has been pushed aside in recent years by many of these next-day and letterbox flowers, where speed and cost-cutting has removed what we feel is the most important aspect of flower presentation. You may have had first-hand experience of being sent a box of flowers by post only to be disappointed to find them...
At the Big Sustainability Awards 2023, MeadowSweet was proud to be awarded the Winner in the category of 'SME Sustainability Journey'. The Awards took place at a black tie Gala Night at the Hilton Ageas Bowl on the 26th October in Southampton, and they are run by the Southern Sustainability Partnership. Our sustainability journey began in 2016, working with an increasing number of British growers and establishing our own cutting garden to ultimately achieve 100% British flowers in our posies throughout the year. As well as connecting our customers with nature and celebrating the diversity and seasonality of locally-grown ingredients, British flowers have been found to have a 90% lower carbon footprint than imported air-freighted blooms. In 2020 we switched from reusable plastic to recycled-content British-made glass jars to reflect customer preferences, and we collect these...
These posies include aromatic myrtle. The bushes have a few delicate white flowers on them at the moment, soon to be followed by blacky-purple berries. The myrtle used in the posies is related to the myrtle bush planted by Queen Victoria in 1846 at Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight. A sprig of this bush has been used for Royal wedding bouquets ever since. As well as the scented leaves of the myrtle, the posies have plenty of other fragrance from the rose-scented geranium, rosemary and the ‘Carbonero’ lily from Lincolnshire once they pop open. For lovingly arranged jam-jar size bouquets of 100% British flowers and foliage please take a look at our singles and our subscriptions page. It's not...
It’s rose hip season! They can be round or pointy, most are red and some are pink. Rose hips are prized for their antioxidants, especially their high concentration of vitamin C. They have been gathered from the hedgerows for centuries and used in oils, teas and supplements, as they may have positive effects on a wide range of health issues such as being anti-inflamatory, anti-aging, assisting in weight loss and pain relief.
In the posies this week are also new season ‘paperwhite’ narcissi for the first time. Often associated with being Christmas a flower, these ones have benefitted from the mild weather we’ve had recently and have come out nice and early on the Isles of Scilly.
