And The Winner Is....?

We have just drawn the winner of our first 'Followers Flowers' competition and can reveal it to you now

.....(drum roll)

.....(x-factor type extended dramatic pause)

Lauren Barrie!!!

Well done Lauren, we'll be sending you an email and you have a lovely bouquet of flowers to do with as you please.

For those of you who did not win then don't worry - we'll be doing this again.

In other news, our Christmas window will be going up on friday now due to staff/weather issues.

Snow Joke in the Flower Trade

It's only November and already the snow is knee deep around some of the country! Snow, like Christmas shopping, should be left until December in our humble opinion.

our dog, Olive, wondering what all the fuss was about

As pretty as it looks it can cause us a few problems with our national delivery service. Last year we had lots of fun and games trying to get flowers to people who were pretty much snowed in up in Northern Scotland. One lady actually had the local farmer take his tractor out to meet the courier as the roads could not be travelled with normal vehicles.

This years Christmas window will be going in next week, incorporating seasonal style and a competition for the local kids. We'll post a picture as soon as it's finished.

winter table flowers

We are also creating a few Winter installations for some of the bars around Edinburgh next week and are looking forward to working outside in the snow :(

There are now only 4 days left before we draw the winner of our Bloggers Bouquet competition. Start thinking about who you might be sending the flowers to if you should happen to win. Of course there is no reason that you shouldn't just keep them for yourselves!

creative types around Shandon last winter

We'll be back next week to announce the winner and show of our window display.

A Florists Ode to Christmas

Just 6 short weeks to Christmas
The Flowers are turning red
The weathers getting frosty
And we want to stay in bed
But the order box is filling up
And the wreaths wont make themselves
So we'll turn the heaters up full blast
And work like Santas elves!

COMPETITION!!!

To celebrate our current and unintended lack of Blogging we'd like to offer our loyal followers the chance to win a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. You can keep it for yourself or you can send it to family or friends. The only stipulation is that it needs to be dispatched to a UK address.

At the end of November we will put all our bloggers names into a hat and draw a winner. That person will then win a £30 bouquet of their choosing.

If you recommend a friend to our blog then don't worry about diluting your chance to win. Let us know about them and we'll give you an extra entry for every extra follower.

Good Luck!

Weddings Weddings Weddings!

Usually at this time of year our wedding season is winding down. We always have a few autumnal and winter weddings to do but they tend to be every two to three weeks rather than week in week out.

This year though it feels like we are just getting started, with 6 to do just in October! Not that we are complaining, weddings are good for business, not because we add extra £zeros to all our costs, but because 80-120 people get to see our lovely flowers all at the same time. The word of mouth business we pick up from events brings us far more business than the weddings themselves.

The shop has kept busy through the summer too, which was always a doubt in these troubled financial times. Thankfully our customers still felt the need to send flowers along with paying the mortgage :)

Thats all for now, the next blog will hopefully not be so long in the making!

A rare and seldom seen outdoor wedding in Scotland

Looks good enough to eat!

The lovely marquee at Glencorse House, made even lovelier with our flowers!

                                                   

Fair Trade Flowers

Normally when we do a wedding we buy the flowers, arrange them and deliver them to the appropriate places.

This Saturday however the bride is bringing the flowers with her, all the way from Ecuador!
She is a firm believer in fair trade practices, and being from Ecuador, she felt one way to be sure of the source was to see it and buy them for herself.

The flowers started their journey about 3 days ago and will arrive with us on Friday morning, all 600 stems of them!! That will give us just enough time to prep and strip them and arrange them in time for the big day...we hope!

July should typically be a quieter month, what with everyone either being off on holiday or spending their hard earned on entertaining kids...but so far we've been pretty busy. Add to that a full wedding schedule and it's smiles all round.

Our home grown organic flower bunches are still going down a storm. The picking is a little erratic this season though as the farmers have to crop them before any big rains come down. As they are a little bit delicate, down pours can be bad for their health.

That's all for now, hopefully the next instalment will be a little quicker.

Well summer is here, which means we can stock locally grown bunches of flowers again.  These gorgeous selections of the prettiest summer stems, from alchmelia to snapdragon, campanula and dill are grown at

Oxenfoord Organics out near Pathhead.  Not only are they grown locally, they are organic too. Summer in a vase.









We are also glad that summer's arrived because the weddings are in full swing at the moment.  Yesterday we created bouquets and arrangements for a wedding at Holy Cross Church followed by a reception at Craighouse Campus, which is a gorgeous venue.  The happy couple chose a stunning selection of white and green summer flowers, including peony roses, sweet peas, hydrangeas and delphinium.

Flowers for The Proms

'It's wasn't like that in our day!'......it certainly wasn't! This week we've been making lots of buttonholes and corsages for School Proms.  All of which have been taking place in the fanciest hotels in town, the pupils arriving by limo, wearing expensive tuxedos, kilts and dresses, and according to one mum, she even had to pay for a hip flask for her son to take along! We also created flower arrangements to adorn the tables of one Schools prom at The George Hotel earlier in the week, and it wasn't a small budget!  I remember having an end of school 'prom', but it was more of a dodgy disco with a few sarnies and a sneaked in bottle of something cheap and nasty ! Ach, we're just jealous!

It's Fathers Day tomorrow, and we have had a few people ordering flowers for their dads.  I don't think it'll ever reach Mother Day proportions though, I think a bottle of whisky somehow tends to win the hearts of most dads! Happy Fathers Day to all you dads anyway...hic.....

Long Live The Independent Florist!

We are excited to start watching the new series of 'Mary Queen of Shops' which starts tonight on BBC1. This series Mary Portas is looking at our local shops such as greengrocers and bakers who are facing increasing competition from the ubiquitous supermarket.  Not sure if  the humble florist is featured or not, but our profession is definitely one which has been hit hard by supermarkets over the years.

While we can pretty much never compete on price with the Tescos and Marks and Spencer of this world, (we simply don't have the buying power), we here at Pollination like to think we offer something a bit more unique, interesting and original than the generic bunches that are often offered by the supermarkets. We have seen some really lovely bouquets though, and a good range of flowers from the simple rose to the more exotic orchids and proteas.  Although the fact that the supermarkets have moved on from just plain old carnations and chrysanths always worries us slightly! On the plus side, it does educate people who may not go into their local florist on the huge range of stunning blooms that are available to us now.

Supermarkets don't generally give the same care to their flowers though, whilst your local florist will prep every individual flower and cut, feed and generally treat them with respect, many bunches from the supermarket will be pulled out and stuffed half in half out of water, stems crushed by customers.  They are often positioned at the front of the store, which from a marketing point of view is clever, but at the same time they are then treated to every blast of cold wind each time a customer enters, and are left wilting in the sun when it's a hot day.  Nor does the supermarket allow you to pick individual blooms to create a tailored made bouquet or arrangement, or offer specialised services such as wedding bouquets (although Asda are selling 'good vaue' wedding dresses, so give them time!).  They produce mass bunches for the masses, rather than original bouquets tailored to the individual.

The supermarkets, along with the recession, are good reasons to keep on top of our game, to keep our shops looking fab, and to keep producing good quality gorgeous bouquets. We find it encouraging that we receive orders from throughout Britain and the rest of the world to send our bouquets through the UK, and that we have a regular local customer base as well as new customers all the time, who have been recommended to us, have seen our website or maybe have received a bouquet themselves.  But we never get complacent.  It is a constant challenge to survive in the highly competitive retail world.

The more local independent shops that close down as they struggle to compete with the supermarket giants, the more our local high streets turn into streets of To Let signs and smashed windows, the more our local communities suffer and  the less specialised, original independent businesses will be available, and what a dull place that would be.

Windy Weddings!

What happened to summer?? The sky is looking a tad dark out there, and the wind is blowing all our lovely plants about.  Leona is running outside as I write to grab another price ticket that has blown away down the street, and she just rescued a large white peony plant from the 'summer breeze'!!!


Unusually for a weekend we don't have any weddings to prepare flowers for, as we are actually going to a wedding ourselves tomorrow.  Our friends Nik and Anna are doing the do up in Aboyne, near Aberdeen, and it should be a great day (even if the weather is looking a bit dodgy!). We first met Nik many years ago when we used to do flower classes in the shop.  He was the only male that signed up for them which we were quite excited about, and we bonded over the flowers and too much wine! A few years later at a Hogmanay party, Nik met the lovely Anna (who bonded over wine...and beer....) and the rest is history. 

There must be lots of weddings on this bank holiday weekend though as tomorrows box if full of orders for corsages and buttonholes.  We can't quite decide if we are going to adorn a flower ourselves or not.  I'm sure as florists we are supposed to be showing off our wares, but we didn't even have flowers at our own wedding!

Nice Day For A Hot Wedding

Phewwie, its hotter in Edinburgh today than it is in Ibiza apparently - how the great British weather can change in a week!

The down side to the glorious sun shine is having to work in the shop! The upside though, is that today's lucky bride is able to get married outside.  We delivered the flowers this morning and it was at least 20 degrees then!  Here's a photo of the ceremony table adorned with a large vase of gorgeous white lilies, tulips and delphiniums.

We have some amazing passion flower plants in the shop, they have got to be one of the maddest flowers, we love em.





Another wedding tomorrow at Balbirnie House Hotel in Fife.  It's a beautiful venue, with gorgeous gardens that I'm sure tomorrow will be filled with merry 'sun kissed' (ie burnt) wedding guests.  If the weather holds, we will head up to Elie on the east coast which has a fabulous beach and very nice pubs (with beer garden!). So we'll deliver the flowers for the wedding, then chase our dog into the sea, whilst licking our melting ice creams - HOO RAH for the sun!

Lily Watch

Monday morning, and yay the sun is actually out ;o))) Well it's not exactly tropical and the ash has closed airports throughout the country again, but the sun is definitely poking through the clouds which is a good start to the week!

We are on Lily watch this week - one of the weddings we have at the weekend taking place at  Keavil House, Dunfermline is predominately white lilies.  Lilies, along with a few other flowers such as peonies, can often prove a bit of a challenge for the florist.

They arrive directly from Holland lovely and fresh and tight, so judging how many days in advance to buy them in order for them to be open in time for the brides big day can be like playing russian roulette!  Too open and the petals might just start to turn or look bruised.  Not open enough and they don't look full or colourful enough for the bouquets/vases etc.  Its not unknown on a Friday afternoon or Saturday morning for florists to be phoning each other desperately searching for open blooms!

The many tubs of lilies we have in our back shop this morning are looking just right (eek, are we tempting fate here!) They haven't opened yet but the buds are looking nice and full and white....everything crossed!

Wedding Flowers and Sunny Flowers

Well its Friday, which normally means getting busy with the weekends weddings.  Tomorrow we have one in Humbie, East Lothian.  Mavis Hall Park have a fabulous traditional  big farm barn there, and even a wee loch where knots can be tied if the weather is behaving.  For the real canivores out there they can provide a large spit with whole pigs to roast for the occasion too.

 We have done a fair few weddings at Humbie , the first one we did we were even guests at. As wedding venues go, it's one of our favourites.  Its always fun to walk by the chickens and hens when setting up the flowers.

We have had lots of online orders this week, and mainly for our new set seasonal bouquet.  Its so nice to see the sunflowers back in the shop, even though summer hasn't quite arrived (yes there was snow on the hills yesterday, and yes it is MAY), it's so nice to see their happy smiling faces giving us more hope than the met office does!

Flowers for an unusual occasion...

Today we were providing flowers for the University of Edinburgh School of Biomedical Sciences.

Every year they hold a remembrance service to honor the many people who donate their bodies to science and medicine after their death.

If it wasn't for this generous act many lives would not have been saved and many innovations never brought to light.

The service allows the medical staff to give their thanks and for the surviving families to remember their loved ones.

Blue & Yellow - a winning combination?

Well, following on from our last post regarding the choices for what was turning out to be of a 'hung bouquet', the flowers have spoken to us.  The red flowers were just not going to work in the end, they had been in abundance over the last while, but seasons change and so do peoples taste in flowers.

In the end, we opted for blues with some yellow mixed in to lighten the mood of the bouquet.  Who knows if this will work and only time will tell how much money we might make or lose out of it, but we'll live with it for a while and see how the public react.

A hung bouquet.....

We are having a dilema here at Pollination, we have done since Friday.

It all started out straight forward enough, all we had to do was create a bouquet everyone in the country would love, or at least be happy with. Firstly we had to decide on the colours for our design. Would we go for a right old mix of shades of blue, a liberal selection of yellows, or use whatever red flowers we had left in the shop?

We tried the blue flowers first, as we had more of them than anything else, but it just didn't seem to be enough. Then we went for the reds, but there just wasn't as many as there used to be in the shop. We had expected a larger delivery of yellow flowers but were let down at the last minute - seems our suppliers had decided the red and blues were the safer bets to stock up on.

As there wasn't enough yellow stems to do anything substantial with, we first decided to go crazy and mix them up with the blue flowers. This worked on a few levels but the contrast was maybe just too great. Perhaps this would be more to European taste, who knows.

So we thought about the reds mixed up with some yellow, as on paper it would seem like a more natural combination. In reality though some of the red flowers looked a little old and tired and may be past their best...

We are still undecided how we are going to put the bouquet together, perhaps we should go for broke and just proportionally represent all three colours. We don't want to get too hung up about the bouquet, but we will let you know how it turns out.

And the winner is....

Well, actually there are 2 winners! Tom aged 5 and Emily aged 4 both guessed 260 eggs, which was the nearest guess to the correct answer of 262!

So they both win a nice large choccie egg to munch on and a bouquet of flowers each (which they may like to keep to make their bedrooms look pretty, or they could be well brought up kids, and donate them to someone they love ;o))

Finn aged 4 came very close with 265, so he has been awarded a wee choccie egg goodie bag.

So well done guys, you are obviously all destined for University having such mathematical skill!


We are closing the shop on Monday so we can recover from eating too many eggs. Hopefully the 'spring snow' will stay away next week unlike earlier on this week, and maybe the sun will shine ...hmm....

Happy Easter to you all!

Eggs Win Prizes!

Another young mind is baffled whilst trying to count how many eggs are in our window!

Count all the eggs, submit your answer and the winning correct entry will win a BIG chocolate egg and a lovely bunch of spring flowers.

So far we've had jostling, shouting and general mischief as the 'young uns' try to psyche each other out and mess up their counts whilst crowding the window and adding up all the eggs.

These kids play hard ball, but it is a BIG egg they've all got their eyes on.

The winner will be announced at 1pm on Friday 2nd of April.

Recession? What recession?!?

Just a quick post to say a huge thank you to the many lovely customers, old and new, that ordered flowers over the weekend.

We had our busiest ever day on Saturday and had a bigger Mothers Day this year than we did the year before.

I know it's hurting a lot of people but we're gratefull that people were still happy to share some of their limited funds with us.

Hope all your Mums had a great day and will be enjoying their flowers for a long time to come.

Banksy it Aint!

We had painted a sandwich board with blackboard paint for a bit of Mothers Day marketing.

It had been out on the street drying for no more than a couple of hours when some dubious prankster christened it.

In the words of Rolf...."Can you tell what it is yet?" (the last word is _oaby)

Answers on a postcard please.

Mothers Day Flowers

It's been a while since our last update, which is bad, but we have been exceptionally busy both in and out of work!

On the horizon next is Mothers Day, the big one, the busiest single weekend of our year. And to be honest, probably my favourite of the big 3. Christmas is good but tends to involve lots of warm colours and cold weather. Valentines is great but has a huge emphasis on roses. Mothers day is fairly non specific in regard to the flowers we send out.

Some opt for fresh spring bouquets full of tulips, hyacinth, rannunculus and freesia. Others like contemporary and unusual creations with orchids, anthuriums, birds of paradise and proteas. Many prefer a more classic bouquets with lisianthus, roses, lilies and veronicas.

The picture here is our 'The one thats for Mum' bouquet from the website. It ranges in price from £30-60 and is available to order now.

Theres plenty more coming along after Sunday 14th but we'll just try to keep our minds on that date for now.

Bye.

Cupid, draw back your bow.....

It's February, and there's a wee man by the name of cupid hovering about getting ready to fire his bow any minute now! - well 11 days from now to be exact. Yes it's Valentines Day soon, and the shop is once again to be filled with an array of reds and pinks and all things lovely.

Red roses have long been a traditional favourite and synonymous with Valentines, and who are we to argue. We will be stocking the sumptuous and velvety deep red Grand Prix roses which are featured on our web sites online shop as 'The Barry White' (half dozen), 'The Mr Darcy' (a dozen) and for the uber romantics (or uber generous!), 'The George Clooney' (2 dozen of the gorgeous blooms).

For those who prefer to go for something different and equally as stunning we have the 'No Roses in Sight (above)', especially for Valentines, as well as other set bouquets or the 'Create Your Own' option. We will be delivering in Edinburgh Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th, and elsewhere in the UK Friday 12th. So let cupid flex his love muscles and get ordering now to make your special someone smile!

2010, a fine year for flowers

Happy New Year to all our lovely customers!

We had a really amazing Christmas period in the shop, so a big thank you to all that helped make that happen. We've been back after a short break for almost 2 weeks now so it's pretty much business as usual at pollination.

On Monday we celebrated 12 years in business! That seems like a crazy long time to us although not quite long enough to justify having an olde worldy 'Est 1900andoatcake' sign on our shop front.

The risky business of selling chocolate in the shop is paying off - we are amazingly selling more than we are eating! After being asked many times by some of our regular customers to stock chocolate, we have at last sourced a fab company called 'The Chocolate Library' who not only make the chocolate in Scotland and are based in Edinburgh, but the choc tastes yummer too! With slick packaging with messages such as 'This is a Bribe'! and 'Yummy Mummy', its going down a storm, and is proving to be the perfect accompaniment to our flowers.

On the flower front there is a definite move from all the reds of Christmas (well for a few weeks till Valentines Day that is!), to lime greens, deep pinks, and an array of spring flowers - yip despite this mad winter weather, spring is on the horizon! Not that we haven't been enjoying the snow, we've been having great fun endlessly lobing snowballs for our dog, and watching snowmen, igloos and even a snow Loch Ness monster pop up in the local park(see pic above). But please can we have some milder, dry weather again!