Coop Roses

Here at The Enterprise Hub, we're keen to highlight stories about new co-operative organisations. Today, we're delighted to draw your attention towards Flowers from the Farm, a Yorkshire-based co-operative from a mother and daughter team.

Flowers from the Farm, which aims to support the British cut flower sector, has been set up by Gill and Peggy Hodgson, fourth-generation farmers from Everingham. The pair, who began growing and selling their flowers on spare farm land, have now started life as a co-operative with advice from the Yorkshire arm of The Co-operative Enterprise Hub. The support was provided by Jon Clarke and the team in the area.

Gill Hodgson said: "One of the problems is that people have tended to forget about seasonality. Alarmingly, only around ten per cent of flowers sold in Britain today are grown in the UK whereas, twenty years ago it was almost half.

"However, with an increase in people moving to greener lifestyles is coming an increase in the popularity of traditional British flower varieties," she continued.

"We believe our co-operative of small growers can succeed where larger ones have failed – we will grow specialist varieties that do not travel well; sweet peas, zinnias, cosmos, ranunculus and many more that are not imported because of the difficulty in transporting them.

"By working together we can encourage and promote the British cut flower - helping to make locally grown flowers the automatic consumer choice."

Indeed, Flowers from the Farm have already begun to sow their seed with features in the Scottish Sunday Express and the Yorkshire Post.

Here at the Co-operative Enterprise Hub, we'd like to wish Gill and Peggy the best of luck. We'll make sure to let you know how they get on as one of the UK's newest co-operatives.