BOOM IN FLOWER TRADE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21484, 28 May 1935, Page 5

BOOM IN FLOWER TRADE

PROSPEROUS BRITISH INDUSTRY MORE THAN 100,000 EMPLOYEES LONDON, May 4. The British ilovver industry, which to-day employs more than 100,000 persons, is now at its busiest, and it seems likely that the public purchases of £15.000,000 on cut flowers—a figure reached last year—is likely to be exceeded.

This pre-Easter and jubilee rush is excellent business for many besides those actively engaged in the flower industry. It has meant increased transport, for on the average at the present time 160 tons of fresh cut flowers are arriving at Paddington station alone every week.

At Covent Garden, where dealers are used to the daily handling of millions of blooms, it is being found that accommodation is greatly taxed. Mr H. Miles, president of the British Flower Marketing Association, which is to give jubilee window-box gaiety to Government offices, and even to Nos. 10 and 11 Downing Street, regards the flower "boom" philosophically. "The demand for all sorts of flowers is going up by leaps and bounds," he said yesterday. "Flower farm production- is increasing. What we really want is an improved standard of production. Naturally, you cannot standardise flowers, but you can seek means of achieving better quality. This is what I would like to see in preference to further increased production. "Tariffs have given us the incentive to go ahead. The imported flower industry has shrunk in the course of three years almost to vanishing point. To-day we have British roses and carnations available all the year round. That would have seemed impossible a few years ago. Now there is no close season. "In jubilee year the buttonhole habit is coming into favour again. There is now a definite demand for orchids, and both men and women wear them. For men the orchid habit seemed to disappear with Mr Joseph Chamberlain, but now the orchid and the gardenia are in demand."