As traditional British flowers make a comeback, Ruth Campbell talks to a North Yorkshire photographer capturing the beauty of these blooms, while celebrating the domestic growers who are nurturing them

WHILE wandering through the marketplace in Hovingham, a swathe of pretty British seasonal flowers, including colourful sweet peas, blue and white delphiniums, cornflowers and scabious, caught Tessa Bunney’s eye.

Having recently returned from living abroad for four years, it made a striking sight, particularly since when Tessa last lived in England the trend for home-grown blooms hadn’t quite taken off.

When she left North Yorkshire for Laos, in south east Asia, most of our flowers were still mass-produced and shipped in from countries like Holland, hot-housed in vast Dutch greenhouses, or flown in from the equator. But with more people interested in the provenance of what they buy, and an increased demand for seasonal local produce, the market was beginning to change.

Tessa noticed the Hovingham stallholder was part of the Flowers from the Farm network of British cut flower growers so decided to find out more. As a documentary photographer, fascinated by the intricacies of rural life, she was curious about the people behind this welcome resurgence.

She visited this new breed of domestic cut flower farmers, mostly women, sometimes couples, on gardens and farms throughout North Yorkshire to observe them at work. The result is a series of stunning images, shedding light on the individuals driving this vibrant, artisan revival. “I pictured them in different seasons and situations, doing everything from potting and planting to cutting and arranging,” she explains.

“We are a nation of farmers, of gardeners. In the 1800s, daily trains used to carry violets from Dawlish, snowdrops from Lincolnshire and narcissi from Cornwall. But with planes came distance, and we could have any flower at any time of year.”

This foreign competition led to a sharp decline in British-grown varieties, which fell from making up eighty to just eight per cent of the £2.2bn cut flower market after the Seventies. And it dramatically changed our landscape.

“Because everything was being imported, we were left with certain kinds of flowers that last, so you wouldn’t find sweet peas or delphiniums in the supermarket anymore,” says Tessa. “The flower farmers are trying to bring back these home-grown varieties. Because we’re buying locally and they’re not travelling, they can last as long.”

Some run very small concerns, worked by just one or two people. Others are big enough to employ a few staff. But in the time Tessa has been documenting their work, Flowers from the Farm has grown. Having started out with three members in 2011, it now has more than 500.

Tessa’s project, which she started in June 2016, has grown too. Intrigued by the blossoms themselves, she began to take pictures of flower heads throughout the seasons, something which, she confesses, has become an obsession, resulting in a huge collection of thousands of images.

Taken in a basic daylight studio, against colourful paper backdrops, the results are simply beautiful. “I decided I would photograph every type of flower cut, and set up a little studio wherever I was. Although I have taken thousands, and am still taking them, I have edited them down to 480,” she says.

Some are repeats from different angles, others have been framed as collections in grids. “I have taken photographs of lots of different types of tulips, dahlias, daffodils, chrysanthemums and lilies, as well as less common but traditional British garden flowers. It is addictive,” she laughs.

These images feature in two new exhibitions at the Joe Cornish gallery in Northallerton, one outdoors, in the courtyard, where the pictures will be embedded in special weatherproof aluminium panels, and the other indoors, featuring a range of different individual flower prints and grids.

Her photos of the growers, largely from Yorkshire and the North, will feature in an exhibition at the Ryedale Folk Museum, which Tessa hopes will tour around the UK.

Originally from Somerset, Tessa, who has a twelve-year-old son, first moved to North Yorkshire in 1991, when she got a job with the Archaeological Trust in York and fell in love with the county. Now living on the edge of the North York Moors, she says: “I like hiking and it was so friendly, with amazing landscapes along the coast and in the National Parks. In my work, I’m often drawn to hills and mountains.”

Her documentary projects reflect this: “I’m interested in people who use and maintain the landscape, such as hill farmers, forest workers and food producers.”

More recently, Tessa has travelled to a rose farm in Kenya, where climate change and water shortages have severely impacted the area and the jobs at the rose farm have become ever more important. She is also working with the Flower Power charity in York, which uses flowers to help improve people’s lives and mental wellbeing.

Many years ago, she recalls photographing a kitchen gardener cutting flowers at the Felixkirk estate, little realising this subject would become such a passion.

“My mum has always been a good flower grower and dad had an allotment. But I have become much more knowledgeable about flowers now. I know more about what’s involved in the nurturing of plants, growing them from seed and keeping them alive and also trying to grow different plants, which I’ve not seen before. It’s inspiring.

“Lots of things can go wrong, there can be problems with the weather and diseases. Growing them commercially, you’re dictated to by seasonality and what will keep well in a vase. I have learnt a lot about the whole business, from what they do to market themselves to how they create bouquets, which is not straightforward. It’s a very creative industry.”

Her favourite photograph is one she took early on: “It was late in the evening, the sun was going down and the colours were really nice. One of the flower farmers, who had been working all day, was picking flowers and stopped, holding the flowers up to her face, to speak to her husband.”