A floral features supplier has planted around 90,000 red, white and blue flowers to create a host of displays designed to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations across the country.
Derbyshire-based Plantscape, which supplies hanging baskets and floor-standing planters to hundreds of councils and other organisations across the UK, started the planting process early, on April 11, in order to fulfil the high demand for patriotic displays this year.
The company will plant around 100,000 individual blooms in 5,000 containers this year, of which 90 per cent will be displays in red, white and blue to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s accession to the throne. A further eight per cent have been ordered in the colours of the London 2012 Olympic Games, while just two per cent will in be the traditional mixture of summer colours of yellows, reds and pinks.
Plantscape had been planning for the Jubilee planting schemes for a year because of the challenges that catering for demand would bring. Not only did the company have to work hard to source enough stock of red, white and blue flowers capable of lasting the whole season, it had to draw up detailed planting specifications to ensure they offered a healthy, full display from early on in the season right until the end of September.
It usually completes the first wave of deliveries of plants by mid-June, but the official Jubilee celebrations at the beginning of the month prompted organisations to request that their displays were in place by the end of May. In response, Plantscape’s planting start date was earlier than usual, which meant that it company heated its glasshouses for the first time in three years to keep off the early Spring chill. It also started delivering its displays two weeks earlier than in other years.
Mark Stone, managing director of Plantscape, told The Landscaper “There is no doubt that the Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics and the European Football Championship combining in one summer has brought out the patriotic side of councils all over the country.
“Inevitably, it is the Jubilee which has driven the extraordinary demand for red, white and blue displays, and that meant we had to change our planting schedules to make sure all the displays were in place for the Jubilee weekend. Everybody knows that the weather in Spring wasn’t the best, to put it mildly, so we are extremely pleased at how the displays have turned out.”
www.plantscapeuk.com