The UK's largest native wildflower nursery is cultivating a rapid growth in demand for its Norfolk-grown plants - driven by changing public attitudes to nature.
British Flora grows more than 250 species of native wildflowers and wetland plants at its purpose-built nursery at Croxton, near Thetford.
It shares the Breckland site with parent company Salix, which specialises in providing plants and "green engineering" services for large-scale river restoration, soil erosion mitigation, natural flood management and wetland creation.
Meanwhile British Flora aims to boost the UK's native plant population by supplying trays of plug plants and seed mixes to customers including farms, schools, councils, community groups, landscape gardeners and contractors.
Native wildflowers growing at British Flora at Croxton (Image: Denise Bradley) The 25-acre nursery grows as many as two million plants, ranging from terrestrial flowers such as ox-eye daisy, primrose and meadow buttercup to wetland species like carex and yellow flag iris.
Production has roughly doubled since 2017 - an expansion unlocked by a £600,000 investment two years ago to build a 2,500sqm "multi-span" structure which can hold up to 600,000 plug plants, and an automated seeding machine capable of sowing 40,000 plant tray cells per hour.
This year the firm says the shared nursery will have delivered a total of around 1.2m plants for Salix and British Flora by the end of September - up by 200,000 on the previous 12 months.
This growth in demand has been attributed to shifts in public awareness and environmental policy - ranging from major utilities companies needing to cut pollution and developers seeking to meet new Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) responsibilities, down to individual gardeners, farmers, schools and community groups wanting to create wildflower corridors or rewild public green spaces.
Head of production James Goring at the Salix / British Flora nursery at Croxton, near Thetford (Image: Denise Bradley) Head of production James Goring said: "I think it is down to changes of policy and general attitude as well.
"We are getting farmers and a lot of businesses responding to BNG, they are giving up a percentage of their land and want to do a wildflower ride or catch crops. And the big utility companies now have to think of different, greener ways of mitigating the impact of their waste water. It all has a ripple effect where smaller companies feel they should follow suit.
"I think generally people's attitudes have changed too. When you look at things like Planet Earth with David Attenborough, if you watched those TV shows ten years ago it was a demonstration of what wildlife was out there, but in the last 4-5 years there has been a conclusion to every episode about what we are losing.
"That is happening across many different media, and I think people are wising up."
One of the new habitat boxes from British Flora's rewilding range, with native plants selected to benefit butterflies and moths (Image: Denise Bradley) To capitalise on this growing public awareness of the need for nature restoration, British Flora recently launched three new "habitat boxes" - each containing 84 plants from 12 different species, specially selected for traditional meadows, pond edges or to benefit moths and butterflies.
And a new online shop is expected to launch at the end of this month, creating a public sales interface.
Tracey Leech, British Flora's sales administrator, said: "We are mainly wholesale, but we recognise a lot more people are wanting to renovate a pond or create a small wildflower meadow, so these habitat boxes are building on that interest.
British Flora administrator Tracey Leech, with one of the reusable, stackable trays designed by the firm (Image: Denise Bradley) "Lots of people want to contribute to nature restoration, but they perhaps don't know how to do it. They might feel overwhelmed, or they need guidance on getting the right thing in the right place that they know will grow.
"So we have selected a good variety of species that are ready for you to plant.
"It is more about thoughtful planting. People are moving away from planting things because they are easy on the eye in the garden, whereas now people are actually planting to bring something back that we have taken away from nature, and reintroduce that into their gardens and fields."
Propagators Grazina Legaudienne, left, and Agnieszka Dawidowicz, at British Flora at Croxton (Image: Denise Bradley) The nursery employs 16 full-time workers, including the teams who propagate, prune and care for the plants. From seed to sale, most plants are grown for about 14-16 weeks.
Sustainability initiatives include last year's introduction of reusable stackable plant trays, designed by the company in partnership with manufacturer Proptek to improve the efficiency of deliveries, as well as recyclable cardboard packaging, biodegradable bags and peat-free compost.
Mr Goring said the firm is also very proud of its plants' British roots.
"We are really big on British provenance," he said. "Native plants will thrive much better than imported plants, they create fantastic habitat for mammals and invertebrates, and they are often doing things like helping with soil erosion, stopping embankments collapsing, and the rushes and sedges are taking contaminants out of the water - so there is a real reason to go native."
The Salix / British Flora nursery at Croxton, near Thetford (Image: Denise Bradley)
Rare flowers revived at nuclear site
British Flora also takes on specialist projects, including a recent effort to rejuvenate rare flowers on the new Sizewell C nuclear power station site in Suffolk.
Ecological surveys found a very small population of Deptford pink, a rare type of dianthus.
Mr Goring said British Flora was given the task of turning a handful of seeds collected from these plants into 1,000 flowers to boost the population at the site.
"They gave us 50 seeds and it was our job over a two-year period to germinate the seeds, let the seedlings grow to mature pants, let those plants seed, and subsequently collect that seed to re-sow," he said. "It was our end goal to produce 1,000 mature plants, and we delivered those back to Sizewell this May.
"All plants have a function, even if it is as a preferred food source for a particular insect. The more species we lose, the more restricted food becomes for invertebrates, and if invertebrate numbers drop, then mammal populations drop. It quite often starts with vegetation, so you need to protect your vegetation and your insects.
"It is like a game of Jenga, if you take one small building block away, you might think: What's the difference? But if you take too many blocks away, it collapses."
A bee and a caterpillar on flowers at British Flora at Croxton (Image: Denise Bradley)