Twenty-eight years ago I designed a World Cup themed bouquet 

In 1998, I was running World Flowers, based in Hook, Hampshire, which would later have a rebirth as Evolve. 

Working with the chrysanthemum grower Alan Frampton at Southern Glasshouse Produce, I put together what may have been one of the first mixed bouquets to appear on UK supermarket shelves: a World Cup bouquet for Sainsbury's, complete with rosettes, ribbons and a "My Football Favourite" gift tag, aimed squarely at those about to disappear for four weeks of football. It launched ten days before the opening game, went into 400 stores nationwide, and sold out. It even made the local paper.

From supply to design

Two years later, we brought the bouquet back for Euro 2000, and I still have the original specification for the bouquet, its pricing and tags.

For the Euro 2000 bouquet, the flowers themselves were straightforward enough on paper: 

• two white Ragean chrysanthemums, 
• one white Stalleon chrysanthemum,
• two standard red carnations, 
• one red gerbera, 
• one red statice.  

The hard part was everything around it. A full specification was needed, i.e. which stem went onto the production line first, which went second, how the bouquet was to be presented, and in what order it was built so it came together consistently across every store. 

I worked with the technical team to confirm display-until dates and vase life for every variety so what left the farm still looked right on the shelf days later. Crucially, costing must be taken into account as a bouquet only works commercially if the numbers hold up alongside the design.

That's the part of floristry people rarely see. Creating a beautiful one-off bouquet is one thing, getting a themed bouquet into 400 supermarkets, on time, at a price that works, with flowers that still look good on day four takes another mindset entirely.

7 World Cups later…

Twenty-eight years on, that's the same discipline behind everything Evolve does now. 

Whether it's a wedding design, a British-grown flower range, or helping another business think through how flowers fit into what they sell, I’m here to help.

Helen