1. The London Flower Farmer
“I have lots of customers who really care about where their food comes from and they want the same for everything that they buy, flowers included”
You’ll find Treea Cracknell’s flower farm nestled between “Reservoir no. 5” and the Lee Flood Relief Channel in Walthamstow. Known as the London Flower Farmer, Treea has had the site since before lockdown started in March, but already it’s bursting with colour and texture from myriad flower varieties.
Her interest in and passion for flowers goes back years. She had always had an interest in flowers, but never wanted to be a florist; shopping for blooms at the big flower markets held no interest for her.
Five years ago she stumbled across the ‘farmer/florist’ movement in America and not long after, discovered one in the UK, too. Treea realised she could grow her own to work with, instead of mass-grown, imported flowers she was used to. So she set about growing them in her allotment and posting pictures of what she was growing. “At the time, not many people were growing flowers in London - it’s becoming more of a thing now, urban farming”.
As a result of posting photos online, Treea went from providing flowers for occasional weddings and for her friends, to getting opportunities to supply flowers for many more weddings, venues and corporate events. She found that people were receptive to flowers with very little carbon footprint.
“Flowers are a luxury and they should be a luxury, but they really lift people’s spirits”. In the last six months, Treea has worked on micro weddings and of course, has seen many that have been postponed.
But, during the pandemic she’s delivered a lot of flowers to people who are desperate to reach out to those they can’t see. Doing that, she says, “you really see the importance of a bouquet of flowers, how they can convey so many different messages. I’ve delivered flowers to people in really heart-breaking situations, where very difficult things have happened. And then to people who are celebrating wonderful things. The variety of life!”.
The location suits Treea’s family life. She was initially concerned that she would have to look for a suitable piece of land to grow on out of London. This would have been challenging when parenting two children who aren’t yet at an independent age. As it stands, she can be on site in 10 minutes on her bike.
However, the balance between home life and her flowers can be difficult to maintain, especially in a pandemic. She’s not yet had a full season here and, as she has children aged seven and 12, much of her time since obtaining the land has been spent home schooling them, rather than working on-site.
“I can’t teach them here, obviously! It’s important to me that they don’t hate coming here, too, so it’s been a very fine balance. I’ve not done anything like as much here as I would have hoped”.
You cannot reach the site by road so there have been logistical issues “but, I’m so desperate to grow flowers at scale that I just won’t be defeated. I’m really excited for my business, but I’m really excited for London, too because I think environmentally, provenance will become more and more of an issue. I have lots of customers who really care about where their food comes from and they want the same for everything that they buy, flowers included”.
Finally, I asked Treea what it means to her, when a customer makes a purchase, be it one bouquet, or flowers for an event: “it’s absolutely the best thing when someone buys from you, as a small business owner there is honestly nothing better. It’s wonderful”.