New Covent Garden Flower Market led the way on the first ever National Florist Day on June 8^th as more than 1,000 florists across the country got involved.

The Flower Market was among the patrons of this inaugural celebration of the magical florist industry and a series of fantastic Flower Demonstrations in the Market causes quite the stir on social media.

Five florists, all long-time customers at NCGM, took it in turns to demonstrate their skills to a live audience, hosted by another lifelong friend of the market, NFD organiser Caroline Marshall-Foster. Elaine of Pesh Flowers, Ahmed of Paul Thomas Flowers, Warren of London Event Florist, Alan of Hybrid Flowers and Simon of Simon Lycett created a variety of inspirational floral designs while also providing expert commentary liberally punctuated with positive and supportive comments about the Flower Market.

The event was live-streamed and watched by no fewer than 1,490 people – not bad at all between 6am and 9am on a Saturday morning. The real measurement though is the reel that was posted as soon as the live stream finished. That has so far been played 31,600 times, with a total watch time of 175 hours. The average watch time was 1 minute and 10 seconds - the instagram average is 7-15 seconds - and, of course, lots of people watched for a lot longer.

If you haven’t seen the livestream, it is still available in its entirety on the @marketflowers feed.

Our National Florist Day activity reached 11,500 accounts and got 36,500 impressions. The Flower Market was been mentioned in well over 100 stories on other insta accounts and, interestingly more than 1,200 visits to the @marketflowers feed were registered in the last week from people who had searched for the Flower Market through Google and other search engines. That's a huge uplift.

For all of the patrons who co-funded the project, it was a unique opportunity to interact in a totally different way with their customers both current and future.  We were able to engage and connect with the industry in a way that not only showed our support for the industry as a whole but generated interest in the market and made us part of the whole buzz and feelgood factor.

Creating that feelgood factor was one of the key reasons the event was launched, said founder and host Caroline Marshall-Foster, pictured below. She explained: “The last couple of years have been challenging.  We’ve had to deal with rising costs, flat sales, increased competition, staff shortages … all things that have dented confidence and added to the pressures.  I wanted to create a buzz, generate a sense of pride and, under an official banner, enable everyone to show off just how wonderful the flower industry is and how it touches every part of life.  That’s why I set myself and the project three goals. To create Pride, Awareness and Sales.

“Having seen the interaction, the camaraderie, the friendships formed, and the support given, coupled with the amazing feedback and astonishing reach, we clearly achieved all three in a way I never thought possible for year one.”

For more information on how you can get involved in National and International Florist Day 2025 email hello@nationalfloristday.com.

The children at Wyvil School, which is a stone’s throw from NCGM, marked the first National Florist Day with a project that involved weaving recycled materials to create this magnificent bouquet of flowers, which we displayed in the flower market. Caroline loved it! Thank you so much to these budding artists and their teacher Sue for all your hard work!