Drawing on all my experience in historic gardening as well as cut flower production, I have developed a distinctive range of crops tailored to the retail market. The flowers I grow reflect my taste for smaller, more delicate-looking blooms, but they are also tried and tested for a long lasting display in the home.

This focus on shop flowers is unusual for a business that does not have its own commercial premises - and it is unusual too in the wider context of artisanal British flower growing - but it reflects my belief in the importance of local retail markets for shaping our sensibilities.

The role of cut flowers, for me, is to strengthen our connection to our local landscapes and the natural world, and they have the best chance of doing this when they are a regular and considered part of our lives. The flowers themselves must be grown in the right spirit, however, and the tragedy of the dominant offerings from supermarkets and high street florists is that they have become one more empty token of industrial production.

My flowers, by contrast, are grown in rhythm with the seasons and with utmost respect for the environment that sustains them. They are available from local, independent shops, ever-changing but always pleading the same case: that we notice, appreciate and protect the fragile gifts of this green planet.