Fresh as a daisy

Provenance matters–and not only for food. Throughout the countryside, estates are turning to cut flowers to satisfy the appetite for homegrown bouquets, discovers Natasha Goodfellow

- Natasha Goodfellow

I’M effectively a gardener now,’ confesses Zara Gordon Lennox, chatelaine of Gordon Castle in the Highlands of Scotland. ‘I help with the mowing, the weeding… we’re all working incredibly hard because we’re so short-staffed due to the crisis.’ It’s not only gardening she’s doing. The lockdown has devastated the castle’s income (with no visitors between February and July), so another side of the business has been fast-tracked: floristry.

When Zara and her husband, Angus, began restoring their eight-acre walled garden in 2015, flowers for cutting, among the vegetables and espaliered fruit trees, were always part of the plan, largely to decorate the castle and holiday cottages. Posies on the tables in the tea room led to enquiries as to whether they were for sale, so the team started making up bunches, first of sweetpeas, then of mixed stems. Lockdown, however, changed everything.

‘We’d bought in a whole load of primroses and primulas to sell just as we were all being told to stay indoors and I couldn’t bear for them to be chucked on the compost,’ remembers Zara. In an attempt to spread a little joy in a difficult time, she dropped them on random doorsteps in the village and, before long, people were asking if she could provide bouquets. ‘I think people noticed we were struggling and realised that, as with food, provenance is important and backing local businesses is important. Our customers were amazingly supportive and we now take orders online and deliver locally in a way we didn’t before.’