I am very conscious of the impact we are having on our beautiful planet.
I have made, and continue to make, changes to my daily life to try and do my bit... Being a sustainable florist, it was really important for me to carry this ethos into Natural Creations so that we could provide a completely sustainable floristry service.
A good way for us to start on our journey of Sustainable Creations is with our flower selection, from May to October we aim to bring you as many British-grown flowers as we can, we only source our flowers from local flower growers around Oxford and wider regions of the UK. Through the remaining months of the year, we use our lovely New Covent Garden Flower Market traders
to ensure our quality is always consistently outstanding.
Equally as huge as our carbon footprint, is our packaging! It saddens me how much single-use plastic is used in the transportation of flowers along with flower shops that still use dreaded cellophane to wrap their bouquets... Therefore we don't use cellophane to wrap our bouquets, nor do we provide it as an option for a 'living vase' for our bouquets, instead, we give you a lovely glass vase.. that you can use time and time again... you're welcome :)
Ok, so now it's time to address the elephant in the room... FLORAL FOAM!! Did you know that one block of floral foam is equal to 10 plastic shopping bags?! Yes, your eyes are not mistaken, TEN PLASTIC BAGS! To put that into perspective, florists that do use floral foam will use around 3-4 blocks for a SMALL pedestal arrangement, so that's 40 plastic bags for one arrangement! It is non-biodegradable, non-recyclable and toxic for both humans and animals. It's such an issue that the RHS has banned water-absorbing blocks from all of its garden and horticultural shows since 2021.
You may think.. floral foam.. how bad can it really be? Well, in reality, it’s made from synthetic, non-recyclable plastic and is created using a combination of carbon black, formaldehyde and phenolic foam, which are all toxic! Though it crumbles, floral foam doesn’t fully dissolve in water or degrade in landfills or soil. Instead, it breaks down into smaller and smaller micro-plastics. These can take thousands of years to completely revert into natural elements and are a real menace to the environment by contaminating our marine life and food chains. In essence.. it is a single-use plastic that you cannot get rid of.
What's the answer I hear you say?! Never fear.. chicken wire is here!! Wahooo, if it's good enough for chickens, it's good enough for Natural Creations - chicken wire is all we use for our installations and I am extremely proud to say..we are a 'NO FOAM ZONE'.
We are always on the lookout for ways to improve and be more sustainable... I am still trying to work out how I can transport an arch on a pushbike..
I'll come back to you on that one!
Phone: 07590 665 864 Email: flowers@naturalcreations.co.uk