A new kind of florists offering some home-grown flowers and the latest trend of hand-tied lush botannicals is about to blossom in Holt.
Penny Nicholas, who currently runs a florist business Crown House Flowers from her home near Norwich, is expanding and soon to open her first shop which will offer new varieties of flowers as well as armfuls of lush long stemmed leaves.
Although some of the stock will be bought from abroad, mainly Holland, Penny hopes to have Norfolk-grown flowers including peonies and tulips with many in the current 'on trend' colour, the Pantone shade of 2019, coral.
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The new florists aims to reflect the change in buying flowers, doing away with using floral foam such as 'oasis' to arrange bouquets in, now thought to contain toxic ingredients, and instead offering more sustainable methods which actually hark back to Georgian and Victorian times.
'We now use chicken wire and twigs to hold flowers together and I'm going to encourage people to buy a cheap glass vase which they can bring back, so it's recycling, and cuts down on plastic packaging,' said Penny, who lives in Horsham St Faith with her husband and two boys, aged nine and 12. 'I want to offer something very different in terms of a florists – I want to help if you are looking for something beautiful for the home, if you are entertaining perhaps, and want to draw the eyes away from parts of your house which might need dusting,' she said.
'What is on trend at the moment are botannicals, lush green leaves and single stem leaves, it doesn't have to be a big spend. I think people are spending more time in the home and want to bring the outdoors in, gone is the demand for tight 1980s-style posies, people want the more ethereal look and are more interested in where their flowers come from and want to be involved more. I have people who are happy to do some of the flower arranging for their wedding themselves, for example.'
Crown House Flowers is going into Pound House in the Market Place, into a unit which was formerly a florists called Passion of Flowers, which closed recently, and is one of a number of new businesses either starting or expanding in the town.
'I looked at opening in Norwich but the overheads are so high and in Holt, there is a really good footfall and the town is growing, I feel really positive that this is the right place to be.'
Crown House Flowers hopes to open in mid May but until then see www.crownhouseflowers.co.uk for more details.
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