Grown not flown: cut flowers in Scotland will show at Chelsea

With their first appearance at Chelsea, South Lanarkshire mother-and-daughter team of Louisina Currie and Lauren Printy Currie are championing home-grown flowers, writes Helen Cross.

Days of Dahlia will make their debut at the RHS Chelsea Flower show this month, a huge coup for the Scottish cut flower farm scene which is growing from strength to strength.

The South Lanarkshire-based flower farm and floristry studio, run by mother and daughter team Louisina Currie and Lauren Printy Currie who grow all their own flowers for their floristry work, will be flying the flag for sustainable floristry and seasonal, locally grown flowers.

The duo has worked together since 2018, when Lauren took a break from her career in visual art to pursue working with her mother in a new world of sustainable flower farming and contemporary floral design. At Chelsea they will exhibit a sculptural installation titled ‘The cracks which appear, and the things that grow from them’ as part of the Creative Spaces displays in the floristry category.

Lauren Printy Currie will be at Chelsea Flower Show for the first time, with her mum Louisina

The sculpture will be made collaboratively by Louisina, a florist of 45 years, and Lauren a visual artist who graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee in 2008. Together, they have extensive experience within the world of floristry and visual arts and will combine their talents for the piece.

All the flowers will be grown from seed on their Eaglesham flower farm. They hope Chelsea will provide them with a platform to communicate to a wider audience about the need to overhaul the floral industry, championing locally grown flowers and sustainable floristry practices. In doing so the team strongly believe you do not need to forgo on beauty, design or ambition.

Much is discussed about the need to support local food producers and eat seasonally, but increasingly, with the work of groups like Flowers from the Farm, which supports almost 1000 flower farms across the UK, there is a need to ensure we support the sustainable cut flower industry and educate people about how the bouquet of flowers they buy as a gift is actually grown and where is it grown, putting a face behind the flowers.

The Sustainable Floristry Network are also making great strides to bring together scientific knowledge, academics, and industry leaders, to help educate farmers, florists and the wider public about the need for more sustainable practices. Days of Dahlia are one of the Industry leaders in this field who are making a tangible difference for a better industry and more sustainable model for floristry, by not importing flowers, not using pesticides or floral foam, and using peat-free compost.

Days of Dahlia champion flower farming in Scotland and throughout the UK, which is a viable sustainable alternative to importing flowers from overseas. Small flower farms like Days of Dahlia are havens for wildlife and are beneficial for the environment. Flowers grown in the UK produce 95 per cent fewer carbon emissions that those grown overseas and imported from countries including Holland, Columbia, Kenya, and Ecuador.

Despite being a nation of gardeners and having a rich horticultural heritage, the UK relies heavily on the importation of cut flowers. A staggering 90 per cent of cut flowers sold in the UK are imported from overseas, causing a detrimental impact on the environment in the process, using pesticides, habitat destruction, water wastage and increasing the amount of single use plastic in circulation, not to mention the air miles.

Louisina, who has been working in the world of floristry for over 40 years and trained in horticulture and floristry in the 1970s comes from a background of makers and crafters in Glasgow.

Speaking to her at Days of Dahlia, I quickly get a sense that Louisina has been a trailblazer and has long been ahead of her time, shunning pesticides and floral foam from the beginning and embracing a much more naturalistic approach to growing and floral design, that is inline with the seasons rather than what is in vogue.

“This is an incredible opportunity and to be able to share it with Lauren on such a prestigious stage to a global audience is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s not often that a Scottish flower farm and Scottish floral designers get to exhibit at Chelsea, so we are going to grasp this opportunity with both hands to showcase what we have been working on tirelessly, to create over the years and importantly we want to educate people and get them talking about sustainable floristry and flower growing.

“We have invested so much of our time and passion into the farm and truly believe in every seed that is sown and every flower that is grown. Although I’ve been in this industry for over 40 years I am always learning, and Chelsea will allow us both to continue to grow and strengthen our passion for all things flowers and design. To say we are excited is an understatement. This sort of opportunity doesn’t come along every day, and we are going to make the most of it.”

Commenting on the exhibit and the thinking behind the design Lauren adds: “The title of the piece The cracks that appear, and the things that grow from them is a nod to paying attention. When you notice the weeds and flowers that grow between the cracks of concrete in an urban street, it’s a reminder of other peripheral ecosystems that thrive in small ways in tandem with, or despite, us. These hopeful little cracks represent spaces for resilience, change, methods of undoing, shedding old ways, and to the much-needed change within our industry.

“I guess you could say it is a statement of intent. We want to pave a space for sowing seeds, for a new world to grow and a new way of doing things. Something that my mum and I champion every day. We have dreamt up this live sculpture and now we can’t wait to make it happen and to show our work and our flowers at the highest level, in an art form that is part of my family, my ancestors and is centuries old, with our own contemporary retelling of it. I hope we will have many conversations about flowers and their role in a sustainable future through our exhibit at Chelsea.”

Lauren adds that she is looking forward to being in London, in contrast to her usual routine, "Living and working in rural Scotland is a slow, quiet way of life which we love, but spending time in London is always inspiring. It’s also exciting to have our garden flowers which were reared in this rural place, come to hold their own in an urban context. We’re both really excited about the build of the sculpture itself, and all the hard work and planning becoming the alchemy that brings everything together in the moment. It will be exciting to see all of the show gardens, with gardens and gardening being one of the key influences in our floristry work.”

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 21-25 May; www.daysofdahlia.com