In this episode Mike chats to Ben Cross of Crosslands Flower Nursery, a family business growing and delivering British alstromeria nationwide all year round since 1936. 

Ben is passionate about the importance of growing their beautiful alstroemerias in a sustainable way.  He regularly give talks about the importance of buying British grown flowers in order to reduce the carbon footprint when flowers are imported from across the world, packed with chemicals before ending up in our supermarkets, florists, garages and farm shops. An unbelievable 90% of the flowers we buy in the UK are imported! 

His 'British Flowers Rock' campaign aims to highlight the importance of buying homegrown flowers ('Grown not Flown') and Mike is delighted to help Ben spread the message of this important issue.   

Ben chats to Mike about the history, challenges and all aspects of running this successful 4th generation family run business.  They also chat about supermarket labelling, chemicals, how to grow alstromeria and much more. 

See pictures of Crossland Flower Nursery alstroemerias here!

Find out more about Ben's campaign and Crosslands Nursery follow him on Instagram & Facebook.

And you can see and hear more from Mike by following him on his popular Instagram account @mike_thegardener. 

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