Chapter 2 - An Industry On It’s Knees?
Ben guided me into a parking space between a glasshouse and a fence, I sweated lightly with the anticipation of having to reverse back out without taking out the verbena bonariensis on the corner (reversing is not my strongest suit) and being about to do my first proper podcast recording. It was 2:45pm, I was 15 minutes early but somehow late also and that wasn’t helping the nerves - when there are growers involved it is the LAST thing I want to do to bother or annoy anyone in the height of summer. So much for journalistic audacity.
I came up with the idea for Flowers For The Future podcast as I was applying for my Nuffield scholarship, knowing that I might love writing but I rarely have the time to sit and read anymore, the idea that I needed to make something that farmers and growers alike could listen to on the go, whether arse up in a flower bed, or rumbling along on a tractor. What that meant in reality, however, was rapidly getting up to speed with mum’s mighty podcasting gear. Something I *really* should have done before being stood in front of Ben in the glistening heat of one of his many industrial glasshouses.
This is likely to be a lesson I won’t learn so lets move on.
Ben moves fast, he is a tall striking man, wearing a cream t-shirt and some striped shorts. Before I even have the chance to look up from my podcasting gear which I’m surreptitiously testing the levels of, he is marching off and I’m chasing after him.
Ben is a fourth generation alstroemeria grower, his great grandparents were been given a piece of land by the government as part of a Land Settlement Association in 1934, moving from Wales to West Sussex where Ben now resides. As you’ll hear in the podcast episode - Ben spent much of his early career as a marine biologist and oceanographer before returning to the family farm. Which takes us to this moment, stood amongst rows of alstroemeria plants no taller than my knee.
‘You’re seeing this at the worst time.’ Ben tells me. ‘They can get this tall’ he gestures, taller than him and he is well over 6ft.
‘No, don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting them to be in full flow! I’m here to chat to you about climate change.’ I said, gesturing widely as though to encompass the entire space with my arms.
For the next hour I chase Ben around the glasshouses, bending and manoeuvring to capture his every word with my absurd microphone as he tells me about his work, about the British cut flower industry, about the way they control pests - a mix of integrated pest management and permaculture methods. A single butterfly lands on my head 10 minutes in and I try not to jostle the recording equipment in surprise. Sparrows flit about around us, twittering, and he shows me the tiny cards hanging from the plant supports containing parasitic wasps to keep the mites under control.
‘We don’t have an issue with ladybirds, so they keep the aphids away naturally’. He offers, before turning quickly and walking off in the opposite direction.
We talk about heating the glasshouses with biomass - locally sourced wood pellets from a local estate - and irrigation for the alstroemeria - which being a dry crop only requires 20 mins watering every month in the winter, and 20 minutes every 10 days in the summer. This is *wild* to me. He tells me this as we walk past a section being watered from the pipes above the crop, and the fine mist of water sprays us gently leaving a layer of tiny droplets across my arms and the microphone drying so quickly in the heat as to be imperceptible.
Back in the cool of the processing shed, amongst recycled cardboard postage boxes and machines for stripping the stems of the alstroemeria, we opine about the state of the horticulture industry. Ben doesn’t just grow, he advocates. And advocating is a sticking issue for both of us because we both feel strongly that the horticulture industry isn’t being supported by government nor effectively enough by farming unions. Ben explains that this is the reason he started his campaign ‘British Flowers Rock’ which is coming up on a 10 years next year (2024).
Ben’s frustration is palpable, it rolls off him in the same way that my ex-colleagues from the environmental policy sector used to radiate it. It is all barely concealed anger, exasperation and annoyance. What Ben doesn’t seems to show however, is resignation. As we round off our interview, which started an hour earlier with me feeling a tad shy and more reserved than I usually would be, Ben asks whether I have any further questions, but my head is already so full with all the things we need to do to revive the British cut flower industry that I switch off the mic and close my notebook. After taking photos for my report, he shows me the biomass boiler and its pellets, and then tells me he has a big bunch of alstroemeria to take home.
‘This isn’t even posey grade’ he tells me matter-of-factly, stripping each stem and discarding the foliage on the floor. ‘We can’t even sell this.’
But I look at this bunch and think they’re perfect.
In the cool of the wooden shed, with almost two hours of high energy back-and-forth between us, he hands me a beautiful bouquet of alstroemeria in a mixture of pinks, purples and whites. Four days on, as I sit in the tent I got for my 16th birthday for Leeds Festival, the rain in Cornwall pouring so heavily that I am questioning whether I should write this in the car where my electricals might be safe - the alstroemeria bunch sit in a vase next to me standing impressively. On the way from West Sussex to Cornwall on Tuesday they had to be out of water for at least 7 hours in a hot sunny car, but it gave me an insight into why florists love them so much - they’ve held up beautifully despite my best efforts.
I can’t stop thinking about my time with Ben in the glasshouses of West Sussex. The vision of a cut flower industry being on its knees keeps hitting me, and I feel a deep determination to do something about it. As I drove to Cornwall to meet my next interviewee I had Ben’s question rolling around and around in my head.
‘We’re never going to turn the tide in our life time, from 90% of flowers sold in the UK being imported and flipping it to 90% sold being British, but could we stem the tide? Could we just prevent it from becoming 91%?’
91% haunts me all the way to Cornwall, and looms large as I walk down the Cornish streets to meet Harriet, my next grower.
