6 more sleeps to go!!!

It's getting super close now and we're feeling the pace in the shop.

The orders are coming in faster than the snowstorms and we're already wondering where it's all going to go. Speaking of which, it just got mighty white outside. See picture above for a live action shot of 'Sunny' Shandon!!

Still, not much for it but to keep our heads down and our hands working!

Our first big xmas delivery comes in later today, assuming they make it up the road, so the shop wil be packed out with Ilex, Amaryllis and all flowers red, white and green. As quick as they are turned into bouquets, table flowers and mantlepeice displays the next delivery will be coming in. And as we look at the mountain of flowers and think (once again) 'We've bought too much!', the phone will start ringing, the door will start opening and pretty soon we'll be wondering (once again) 'Why didn't we buy more!'

Such is xmas in a florists, gogogo, eateateat, stressstressstress, sleepsleepsleep...repeat. But we wouldn't have it any other way.

3 weeks and counting!

It's the first week of December and we have been furiously creating Christmas table arrangements in a range of black or red glass round and square bowls. From gold, cones and slices of orange, to Cinnamon sticks, silver skeleton leafs and limes.

Outside the shop is adorned with holly and pine wreaths - natural ones, sparkling ones and cool fruit and berry based ones. One customer bought 4 yesterday!

We've been out installing Christmas flower arrangements in some bars and hotels too in the last few days, and the orders for Christmas deliveries are becoming more frequent.

All we need now is to buy a new Christmas CD and get those tunes blasting......

Walking in a Winter Window Land!

In goes the christmas window, simple and stunning...or so we like to think!

The orders are coming in now and we've got wreaths up on the walls. All we need now is 'thats what I call christmas vol 788' to be dropped into the cd player. I've got mistletoe and wine in my head already, I guess thats one of the reasons that people hate this time of year ;)

Edinburgh is cold cold cold today, but thankfully dry and not too breezy. The shop is busy and lunch is almost cooked.

We'll be back with pics of the wreaths next week!

20% discount on christmas flowers at pollination!

ding dong merrily on high, the berries are a coming. reds and golds, and christmas tunes we are all a humming.

four more saturdays,
30 more shopping days,

till ole santa brings his cheer

hang the mistletoe and the door wreath

and order all your flowers here!

just been taking pics today of a couple of set bouquets in a lurvely christmas stylee which will be appearing on the website very soon. there's a sneak preview above...oh and we will also be offering all you registered users a 20% discount if you order your christmas bouquets before 14th december, so if you have not signed up to the site yet, now is the perfect time. how to make your festive shopping easy(and cheaper!).

Winter Hues

It's that time of year again. After weeks of moaning at other high street shops for bringing out the Tinsel in October we're having to start thinking about the silly season ourselves.

The shop is already filling up with pussy willow, contorted willow, salix and skimmias. Pinks and blues are transforming into deep reds and burnt oranges and Ilex Berry has been spotted on the flower trucks! As much as we hate the cold we love the changing season and the new flowers it brings.

All of us are starting to look a little bulky with extra layers and gloves and even the dog seems reluctant to shed any more hair than she has to - yay!

From Russia With Love

We were standing in the shop yesterday when a mysterious, dark haired young man swept in through the door. We both stared at each other and raised an eyebrow as he approached the counter.

'My name is Fedulove, Roman Fedulove, and I am from Russia!'

Then the penny dropped, Roman had ordered a couple of bouquets from us before, from Russia, via the website. His fiance lives in Edinburgh and he is a man that understands the value of flowers from afar!

As nice and unexpected as it was to meet him in the flesh, he really outdid himself by presenting us with a couple of lovely gifts from back home.

We hope you have a great stay Roman and enjoy some warmer weather than you'll be getting on your return.

In other news, the lovely Leona is presently on a boat (SHIP!) cruising the Mediterranean and soaking up the sun and sangria. We're just about coping without her and hopefully will not have throttled each other by the time she gets back ;)

Keeping up the foreign theme, we have just returned from 4 nights in lovely Florence, an amazing city that seems to be home to legions of designer clad men and women but very few florists....perhaps there is a gap in the market for us to start selling our gucci gladioli and prada proteas that we've been developing.

That's all for now, we'll try not to leave the next one so long.

Locally Sourced Flowers!

For a long time we've been asked by our customers if we could find them locally sourced flowers.

Until recently we've always had problems with either price or quality - or both! - and this has left us somewhat disappointed. Thankfully things have changed due to a lady called Anne and her farm near Pathead.

For the past few weeks she has been delivering gorgeous bunches of home grown garden flowers and they have been flying out the door. We took a bunch home the first week to road test them and were very happy with how good they looked and how well they lasted.

In order to spread the word we've dropped an email to the Shandon Food Group, an environmental organisation in the area, that work hard to spread the home grown message and generally do good stuff for the environment.

Today brought us 2 weddings, one at our local church, St Michael's, and the other in nearby Corstorphine.

This is the first Saturday since Lorna, our trusted weekender, has left us. She walked into the shop many years ago and asked if she could come in and work for free! After taking advantage of her good nature for a while we decided to pay her and she has been a regular feature of our Saturday shenanigans since.

Unfortunately her 'proper' job, offered her more hours and money and she decided to reclaim the weekends for herself, leaving us to pick up the slack, sweep the floors and make our own coffees.

On the plus side, we don't need to pay her anymore so Adios Amigo!

Thats it for now, bye.

Festival Frolics and Flowers

Its raining most days, there are roadworks everywhere, groups of men are sauntering around casually in superhero outfits, women are dragging men along by dog leads... yip, our great city is in the throes of madness that is the Edinburgh Fringe and Festival.

It's at this time of year when we wish we weren't in the flower trade and sold beer, saltire embossed plastic rain ponchos or that tartan flowers existed...we'd make a killing! We have however sent a few bouquets to the thesps and performers from their loved ones and/or supporters, so we've managed to get in on a piece of the action!

Schools are back today too, which is good news as our passing trade side of the business always picks up as the mums have freedom again!

We are noticing a change in the seasons too, from the slight drop in temperature and the endless rain and the fact its dark again at 5am when our alarm goes off! (I can hear the violins playing in the background..). But we do love the the change in flowers too - more deep rich colours are dominating the flower trucks, and some old favs like amaryllis, chillies and snowberry are making a comeback...(how many weeks till Christmas again....eek!)

Web Site Blues

We're florists, we deal in organic matter and generally have our feet rooted in the muck of the physical world. If a lily comes in and it looks like it may have been chilled, we can spot that. When flowers need a little TLC we can deal with that. If a bouquet doesn't look just quite right we can tweak it.

These are things we can do.

When our web site starts playing games with us we get a little worried. When our usually super cool web designer throws his hands up in despair we really start to freak out.

Although the job is in hand and there's a bit of a rebuild going on we're still facing a couple of weeks of uncertainty where the very odd customer may face problems when trying to complete their order.

C'est la vie as they say. It will be sorted and we can get back to our plans of world wide web domination.

Outside of our technical hitches, the Flower Council of Holland have come up with a novel gift to celebrate the great British summer. Combining humour, flowers and the dutch love of all things orange they have created a flower print umbrella to keep us dry during the seasonal months. Very thoughtful of them!

Giant Flower Week!

On our delivery this morning were oversize Celosia and the biggest Dhalia we have ever seen! They dont come cheap but they do make quite a statement we think.

Things are busy as ever with 3 weddings last week and another one this saturday. On top of that there's always a healthy amount of buttonholes and corsages to make up for our customers who are off to weddings of their own.

We created a couple of tribute bouquets for the poor fireman who lost his life on Dalry Road last week. Some flowers you're always happy to make up, others you wish you didn't have to.

On a happier note, our dog, Olive, was up and running in the Pentlands this morning, courtesy of Sarah McLean and Citydogs! She takes Olive and a pack of other hounds out in the wild and lets them be themselves for an hour or two. Then very kindly hosed her down so she flopped into her bed all clean and soft and not honking in the slightest!

In Shandon News, Tom Duffin, our neighbour, of X-Sail fame was on the telly last week, promoting his wind powered land yacht on a beach with no wind....not ideal but they did a pretty good job of selling it all the same - just a shame my gran's dead, she would have loved it! You can check out our local celeb here.

Come Rain or Shine

Phewwy it is hot round these parts! Not that we are complaining, but we have had to invest in a few fans to try and keep the flowers cool and there's a constant argument as to who gets to take Olive, our puppy for her walks (aka leisurley stroll through the park in the sunshine!).

The rain has not been a stranger either though, which at least has been keeping all the garden plants in good health!

Despite the whole of Shandon being away on holiday since the schools broke up on Friday, we had a busy weekend with 2 weddings, one at The George Hotel, the other at Craighouse. See photo above.

Talking of holidays, a couple of the local businesses are off on their hols too - one of which is Blueberryhill cafe next door, how will we survive?! No baked tatties and giant scones for us this week - boo! So we brought our own lunch in today - Innocent (the smoothie people) do veggies pots now, so just eaten a curry one and feeling very 'fu' and have left the shop with a floral yet spicy aroma!

Monday moan alert though - where are the bloomin bin men???! I am surrounded by bin bags and Olive is in her element ferreting around in them! they didn't turn up at all last Monday, and its looking the same this week...rant rant ;o))

Three weddings this week - a sunflower one, a daisy one and a peony one - all very summery but all with a contemporary twist - should be good, especially if the sun hangs around a bit longer...

Flowers for the Teacher.

It's that time of year again where kids are moving up a year or onto a new school and leaving their favourite teacher behind. And more popular than ever it seems is the gift of flowers.

For some it's just a few stems of gerbera, others a nice little orchid plant. And although we love the business we do feel sorry for the people comming in and ordering 4 or 5 bigger bunches, or 6 or 7, or 8 or 9, or even the very rare 15 bunches at once!

I'm not sure if these people have lots of kids or if their kids have lots of teachers but we welcome it all regardless. For next week the holidays start and Ashley Terrace will be a much quieter place because of it.

If it wasn't for the 5 million upcoming weddings we've got booked we might actually have time to be bored!!!

Also, we just want to say a big hello to all the brave souls who made it to the Edinburgh Canal Festival on Saturday. There was a pretty good turn out but I think that with there being as much water coming out the sky as there was in the canal itself, it wasn't quite what the organisers had hoped for.

Play it again Sam!

Both of last weeks events went without a hitch and we got away to Troon as planned!

The first was a party that Weber Shandwick were throwing for a client. This was based on the site of the old 'Fat Sams', an Edinburgh institution that many people over a certain age will have some kind of foggy, hazy memory of!

The new buildings are very shiny and presently unoccupied. Leona and Nik had to put on the blue plastic shoe covers and try not to make a mess as we set the flowers up.

Our next trip was to Senergy, a new company we have been working with who reside in a great office on Princes Street. They have amazing views over the Castle, Gardens and Station, thanks to some massive floor to ceiling windows. The down side of this is the temperature tends to creep up a little during the day so we have to give a little extra thought to their flowers. The event was the official opening of their premises and as such they wanted flowers that would make quite an impact. I like to think we obliged!

So, jobs done and all that was left was to pack up the dog and drive through to Troon in heavy rain and traffic to relax for a few days.

Birds, times gone by, and faking it the Pollination way

Pollination has been overtaken by stunning birds this week...unfortunately for Nik they aint the long legged, blond kind, but the long stemmed 'strawberry blond' kind...aka Birds of Paradise aka Strelitzia. We are knee deep in the said birds and white callas for one event, and more birds, red nutens and spikey rodeo gerbera for another.

Talking of long legged blond birds though, we did have a visit from one yesterday, this one was in the form of the lovely Hilary. Hilary used to work for us about 7 (or more) years ago before she ran away to become a teacher. Her and her man are getting hitched and came by to chat about wedding flowers. It was fab to see them both again and have a long overdue catch up, as well as talking business of course!

We recently got in a range of silk flowers to sell in the shop. We never really wanted to get into the whole fake flower thing, but as many of our customers enquire about them, we decided to do a bit of research and found some really gorgeous stuff...even we, who have never been known to 'fake it', were convinced. Low and behold, the old business adage of listening to your customer rang true, and they have been going down a storm. Teamed with some contemporary black glass bowls and vases they really have added a big splash of colour to the shop.

Florists, Wedding Planners, Barbers and a Beach

After working hard all week, we took Olive our 7th month old puppy down to Tynningam Beach near North Berwick on sunday. It was a bootiful sunny morning and we had arranged to meet 2 of our favourite clients - Suzie, from The Players Lounge, and Val, from As You Like It, and their kids, dogs, a hangover and a husband . The dogs ran around like mad beasts and the kids stripped off and jumped straight into the nearest rock pools. The rest of us grown ups, plonked ourselves down on the sand and wondered why we hadn't brought any beer!

Back to it this morning, with an early morning vase run for some of our contracts for Nik. Meanwhile Gill got stuck into creating some sumpteous summer bouquets for the edinburgh deliveries and a couple of exotic creations that will get picked up later by a courier. One will be taken to Birmingham and the other to London. All this by 10.30 am. Now there is just enough time for a quick caffeine intake, and maybe a scone, before more bouquets and deliveries need to be done.

Flowers around Edinburgh

Although it's been a regular week in the flower shop our corporate and online flower sales have been keeping us working extra hard, helping to burn off the calories from the weekends donut extravaganza!

On a Monday morning the van goes out delivering vases to the offices of Edinburgh. Second stop is Bloomberg, where what should be a quick in and out mission often turns into a 20 minute chat about last weeks 5 aside match and the shoddy opposition put up once again by Kev and his coffee shop collective! Only joking Kev, you'll win a game eventually I'm sure.

Tuesdays see us delivering flowers to many of our retail clients such as 20 20 opticians and some of the Cheynes salons about town.

Wednesday, today, gives us a bit of a reprieve as there are no early morning deliveries to be done so we can take a bit more time walking the dog and sipping our tea. It won't last long though, the peaceful bits never do!

4 Weddings and a Donut (or 12)

it's been a busy old day here at pollination, what with 2 weddings to do and 2 future brides coming in for a chat. it's a shame the weather didn't really play ball but it could have been worse. check out the pictures here of todays bride's bouquets.

bride number 1 (who's bouquet is on the left) gave us a dozen kripy kreme donuts as a thank you, all but 2 were gone within the hour. cardiac arrest here we come but what a way to go!!!

today gill and lorna have been yapping about the apprentice, dissecting it and concluding that they both want yasmina to win (because kates too perfect!). matt, lornas other half, has brought us in chocolate cookies - we forgot to inform him of the donut situation and are now looking at them with longing and dread in equal measure.

only 2 hours to go now and then home for cava, grub and terrible saturday night tv - floristry is the new rock and roll!! not much left to sell here, been a pretty hectic day all round, but that's always a good thing!

Pollination gets it's Blog on!

woo hoo!!!! it's our first blog....been meaning to do this for a long while now, but usually get waylaid by the general runnings of our shop - pollination.

'we' are nik and gill and we have been in the flower trade now for over 10 years (nik has lost much hair over this time, and gill grown some!). we have a flower shop in edinburgh - 42 ashley terrace edinburgh eh11 1ry....0131 313 1011....www.pollination.co.uk

at the moment there is us, leona and lorna (our fabulous florists) and the recent addition, olive - our 6.5 month old gorgeous golden lab puppy, who is yet to pick up the scissors, but does manage to pick up everything else that she can chew on...

today we've managed to leave the shop for a few hours taking olive for a wee meander up around corstorphine hill, before staring at the computer for much of the day. we left the shop in leonas trusty manicured hands, filled with beautiful summer flowers after preping the latest dutch delivery hot off the wagon..the most impressive flower being a stunning and huge blue hydrangea which we'd ordered for one of the 4 weddings this weekend (4 - omg! guess it is the season!)

must have been consuming way too much caffeine today though, cos as well as getting our fingers oot the proverbial and starting this blog, we also managed to work out this twitter phenomonominum, well we joined it at least...hot news in twitter land seems to be the death of david carrodine (bill in kill bill - a poster of which incidently hangs, edges curling in the pollination loo!). you can find us on twitter under 'pollinations' - with the 's' cos someone else inevitably got in there first darn it!

so as the dog is jumping manically, the cat is purring in my ear and stomachs are growling all around, it must be feeding time at the zoo....hopefully we'll manage to squeeze in an update of our flower world in the comings days....