It's a cooler July for our British flower growers

After the extreme heatwave this June, we've thankfully settled into a cooler start to July. That's good news in our New Forest cutting garden and for the network of British growers we work with all year. Intense sunshine and heat brings flowers on quickly, so we end up with a flurry all at once, and too much sun with little rain can stress them, particularly softer varieties like scabious and phlox.

Have you noticed more swifts than in previous years? I feel I'm hearing their high up screams more than usual. I really wanted to get a couple of swift boxes up on the house before they arrived this year but I wasn't organised enough. Hopefully I can sort it before next year's breeding season. With the dry springs we're getting, it's harder for them to find the right sort of mud to create their nests naturally.

Our July posies will feature sunflowers, agapanthus, scabious, allium, cornflower, delphiniums and dahlias. All flowers grown in the UK, and tied by hand the morning they go out. All our MeadowSweet flowers are British-grown, sourced through a network of British growers, and many of the flower farms go back several generations.

Whether you'd like to order flowers for delivery as a gift, send a hand-tied posy of seasonal British flowers to a friend, or start a flowers subscription with us, you can do all of it from our website.