New Covent Garden Flower Market

I was recently Maid of Honour at my best friend's wedding and with this prestigious role comes great responsibility. I was determined from the outset to fulfill all of my bridesmaid duties, whatever they may include, so of course I said yes to getting up at 4am to go to New Covent Garden Flower Market.

In all honesty this was no great sacrifice to me because I've always wanted to go to the flower market, I just needed a bit of motivation to get up hours before dawn to get there!

The market is currently based on Nine Elms Lane between Battersea and Vauxhall. The trading hours are generally from 4am - 10am, Monday - Saturday. The earlier you arrive, the more flowers there will be. We arrived at around 5am and headed straight to the stall held by Bloomfield Wholesale Florist as they had been recommended to my friend by a floristry teacher at The Covent Garden Academy of Flowers.

Arriving at the market as a customer can be quite daunting as it's hard to know where to begin. It helped that we had a specific wholesaler we were heading for and my friend had a clear idea of the style of bouquet that she wanted to make - more on that in a future post. The market has an excellent website with a pretty comprehensive guide which gives a good explanation on how pricing and purchasing works.

The owner of Bloomfield Wholesale Florist is John Hardcastle and he was beyond helpful once we revealed to him that we were florsitry rookies. He understood the look we were going for and walked us around the stall making suggestions and being open and honest about price. For example there were a few flowers we liked the look of that he advised us against buying - either because they wouldn't be at their best on the day of the wedding or they weren't in season and so were too expensive to buy in bulk.

Once we'd chosen the flowers, we headed to the foliage stall where we were met with the same level of professionalism and warmth. After paying up, the flowers were carefully boxed and a porter kindly carried them to the car, refusing to take a tip.

Mission complete, we had ourselves a well earned bacon sarnie from the cafe made famous by Ed Miliand. To be fair to the man it's difficult for anyone to look smart whilst eating a bacon sandwich before 7am. For the record, it was a truly excellent butty.We then spent a good half hour just wandering around the market checking out all of the more unusual flowers and the munchkin pumpkins ready for halloween.

I would recommend for anyone who enjoys flowers to visit New Covent Garden Flower Market. Even if you don't have the intention of buying any flowers, it's a real pleasure to see the sea of flowers in all colours and varieties.

Another post will be on its way to describe my morning in DIY bridesmaid bouquet heaven!