Flower deliveries aren’t just for sick friends and Mother’s Day. Madeleine Kingsley finds out more
An unexpected ring at the door mostly makes the heart sink: it’s surely two men in suits proffering The Watchtower, or a slick double glazing salesman? Fortunately, these callers have something rather sweeter smelling on offer – a stylish bunch of flowers fresh from the growers, delivered to your door every Friday, by a Wandsworth company that has discovered a niche in the flower world.
“Other companies deliver flowers to the door, but their market is very much for gifting. We are the first to focus on people buying flowers for themselves,” says Freddie (suitably surnamed Garland) of freddieflowers.com. For £20 a pop, his blooms arrive in a fetching brown box complete with his own cartoon drawings showing how best to display them. Flowers vary week by week – one box may contain a rainbow of tulips, the next perfect blush Avalanche roses, tucked in with eucalyptus and sea lavender.
Since launching in October 2014, he’s built an impressive celebrity client list: Michael Gove, Georgia May Jagger and screen stars, Zoe Wanamaker and Samantha Bond are all fans. Even Downton Abbey’s Lady Rosamond receives regular displays of her favourite buds, hydrangeas.
Enterprise hub is a sleek, grey-and-white painted cottage-style office behind Wandsworth Common station. There are 27 full time staff members here, plus 15 in the Isleworth packhouse and a further 12 drivers delivering to locations across London and further afield in Bristol, Oxford and Leeds.
He’s learned fast that flowers are subject to fashion – dahlias are coming back – and that a personal approach is particularly important. He must, for instance, beware of lilies which can poison cats.
“We have about 100 customers who, when lilies are in the mix, receive an alternative box labelled ‘Cat-astrophe avoided’.”
With florist parents, and a surname like Garland, flowers were surely an obvious career path?
“For 30 years my dad had a big flower shop in Pimlico where my mum was the florist. But to make a shop look lovely, you must fill it with flowers and if people don’t buy them, you have to charge very high prices to cover the wastage. The simplicity of my idea is that for every 100 deliveries, I know exactly what I need – 10 roses in each means a thousand roses. There is absolutely no wastage, so I can plan accurately ahead.”
Yet the future was less certain when Freddie graduated from the University of Leeds with a third class degree in music and music technology, a ‘shockingly appalling’ result that spurred him on to apply himself in the workplace. He began knocking on doors for Abel & Cole, the organic fruit and veg delivery service, learning all about the ‘sign-up and send’ contract business model. Convinced that it could work with flowers, he put the idea to Keith Abel who became his mentor, and lent him some money to get started.
One Monday in October 2014, Freddie knocked on seven Wandsworth doors, hit lucky at three and delivered his first boxes that very Friday.
His first official office, doubling as a delivery van, was a yellow milk float.
“I forgot to test drive it before buying, and only discovered as I turned from Loxley Road onto Trinity Road that it had an impractical top speed of six mph – basically walking pace.”
A month later, a storm blew away his packing station – a tent he had put up in the family garden.
Today it’s quite a different story. With 14,500 clients signed up, business is positively blooming. People love a bouquet at the door, it seem -– even if they’ve paid for it themselves.
Freddie's Flower Tips
Julian Love
- The right vase makes all the difference. Try breaking out your flowers across a few jam jars, or choosing a jug or teapot as a vase. Our website displays photos of the best arrangements by customers and they receive a free delivery if we feature them.
- My favourite technique is to spread the star flower of the bunch evenly around the edge of the vase, creating a criss-cross of stems in the centre, then pop in your other flowers
- Foliage is very important. Create a nest around the rim of the vase with the greenery, or add it to the centre and pull its branches through the stems of the other flowers.
- Layering works well.
- We make sure that all the varieties of flowers are different heights, which gives depth to the bunch. Often we leave tall foliage to poke wildly through the top.
- Make sure that colours and textures work well together. Peonies look striking on their own but we might use an assortment of peony varieties, with colours that work well together like pink and white. Add a touch of foliage or a lacy flower such as bupleurum to give the arrangement a different texture.
- Think about positioning
- It’s best to place a shorter bunch on a dining table, so you can see the person opposite. A taller arrangement always looks majestic in the hallway.
- Change the water every three days, along with flower food (one sachet per litre).Trim your flowers by one inch, diagonally with clean secateurs. Use room temperature water (too hot or cold dehyhdrates the flowers) and keep the vase in a cool place, away from direct heat or draughts. No leaves below the water line.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on more great lifestyle stories
Sign up to our Weekly Newsletter for exclusive competitions, offers and stories
Check out our Interviews Section for more great chinwags with local celebrities
