English poinsettia leads the way at New Covent Garden Market

Today (December 12th) is National Poinsettia Day and English-grown poinsettia is ruling the roost at New Covent Garden Flower Market this year, but sporadic supply has struggled to keep up with the traditional festive demand.

Poinsettias belong to the Euphorbia genus, which has been classified as medium-high risk by the UK government’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. In the current border control climate, this has necessarily coloured the commercial decisions of some traders here.

“I would ordinarily bring in good volumes of poinsettia from the Netherlands, but I’m trying to replace that with as much English poinsettia as I can,” said Freddie Heathcote of Green & Bloom Plants. “Because of the way it is classified, there is a high risk to us of delays at the border if we import from Europe and we need to know when and if deliveries are going to arrive to keep our customers happy.”

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Craig Broadley, pictured, at Quality Plants has imported some Danish poinsettia this year, but experienced challenges with delays at the port. “The lorry gets stopped every time and is often delayed for significant periods, which means we can’t fulfil orders and the plants are not in as good a condition when they arrive. The financial impact is horrendous," he said.

“Poinsettias don’t like the cold, so in terms of condition and quality, two hours on a truck to the market generally beats up to two days on a truck from the continent anyway. Therefore, we mainly sell English poinsettia, a lot of it comes from L Mills, which until recently was a tenant at the market. There is demand for everything we can bring in and although it’s been a bit short at times, the cost of home-grown plants is a bit lower than for imported and we can charge accordingly.”

Both Craig and Brogan McGuinness at Green & Bloom, also pictured, said there has been additional demand for white poinsettia this season. “It always seems that when we have more red, the customers want white and vice versa,” laughed Brogan. “We’ve sold plenty of white, peach and glitter, but red will always be popular. The price this year is very similar to last – around £6 a plant for trays of six and in the region of £16 for single plants, though there aren’t as many of them around.”

Freddie added: “Last week, we were a bit short because one of our English suppliers, who delivers twice a week, was running short themselves – demand is as high as ever at this time of the season and we’re always on the look out for more domestic suppliers to help us meet it.”