Flowers from the Farm (FFTF) is the membership association championing artisan growers of seasonal, locally grown cut flowers encompassing a vast network of flower farmers that stretches across the UK. A not-for-profit organisation, FFTF encourages more people to grow cut flowers for the UK market but also promotes local, seasonal flowers and crucially, connects willing buyers with their local flower farmers.
As a flower farmer herself, Hodgson and Chris Smith set up the FFTF in 2011 with the aim to increasing the market for home-grown flowers and giving new growers the information they needed to start their own businesses. To date, the FFTF has almost a thousand members growing flowers for market from Skye to Cornwall and is the closest thing the British flower industry has to an official trade body.
In 2018 FFTF took Gold at RHS Chelsea Flower Show with a display containing flowers and foliage sent by 86 members from all over the country. “I’d thought that was the pinnacle of my floral career until May 2023 when FFTF members grew all the flowers for the King’s Coronation in Westminster Abbey and a small group of us were presented to Their Majesties”, writes Hodgson.
Co founder Chris Smith retired from his role at the end of 2023. “For almost 13 years he’s been the unchanging, unseen strength behind the company and none of it would have happened without him”, said Hodgson.
The FFTF is now in the capable hands of co-chairs, Jo Wright and Wendy Paul along with Debbie Scot whom the FFTF is nearing the end of her term in the role. Wright and Paul run Organic Blooms, a social enterprise in South Gloucestershire where they grow Soil Association certified cut flowers.