Growers

We’re committed to doing more to give British products pride of place on our shelves from the moment they are ripe for picking.

We pledge to:

extend British seasons for home-grown fruit and vegetables, support British horticulture with new ranges, source British flower varieties and commit to fruit and vegetable growers with new long-term contracts
deliver on the NFU’s fruit and vegetable pledge and provide more seasonal British fruit and vegetables

Creating new varieties

Naylor Flowers is one of the main suppliers of British flowers to the Co-op. They are passionate about growing new and interesting types of flowers for bouquets and have been working with the Co-op on new product development for the last decade.

The farm grows flowers between January and November, they grow 16 different crops with up 20 different cultivars of each. As well as being large-scale daffodil growers and a leading UK producer of delphiniums and larkspur, they grow a wide range of products including alliums, scabious, eryngium and echinops and they are the UK’s largest grower of ornamental brassica.

Gemma Gray, Co-op Technical Manager for Horticulture, said

‘’We work closely with the team at Naylor Flowers to trial new and exciting British flowers each year, we add them to our British Seasonal bouquet which regularly changes throughout the summer months as and when the new flowers are at their best and ready to be picked’.

The Naylor family have been growing flowers in the same village since the 1940’s and have LEAF Marque accreditation, this is an externally-audited environmental standard. They aim to run their business in a way that benefits the environment and community around them which aligns closely with the Co-op’s values. Each year a hard working team of up to one hundred flower croppers harvest tens of millions of stems by hand especially for the Co-op. In 2016 Naylor Flowers formed a labour agency with their neighbouring farm to help to improve the opportunities for everyone who works in their team.

Matt Naylor, the MD, says

“We love growing things that bring joy to the people who buy them but it is equally important to us that our flowers also bring a benefit to the hard working people who harvest them and to our local community and environment”