Name: The Flower Centre, reviewed
Item: The Flower Centre
Rating: 6.6

The verdict

The Flower Centre has been on Bristol Road South since 1975 and it is the best value serious florist in south Birmingham. Fifty-one years at one address on an arterial road, through the closure of the Longbridge car plant two miles away and everything that did to this part of the city, is a record that speaks for itself. It has outlasted most of what was around it. The shop trades on reach and price rather than on design. Its delivery pages cover an unusually wide spread of the city, from Harborne and Moseley across to Weoley Castle, Rubery, Quinton and Bearwood, on a 2pm same-day cut-off. For a shop of this size that is an ambitious van operation, and it means The Flower Centre turns up as an option in parts of Birmingham where you would not expect a Northfield shop to be competitive. The limitation is the hours, and they are strict. It opens at 8.30 and closes at 4.30 on weekdays, 4pm on Saturday. That is a shop that starts and finishes early, which suits Northfield and does not suit anyone trying to buy after work. Combined with a conventional house style and no stated position on sourcing, it is a shop you use for value and coverage rather than for anything else.

Trading hours are 8.30am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday and 8.30am to 4pm on Saturday, closed Sunday, with a 2pm same-day delivery cut-off. The shop maintains per-postcode delivery pages across a wide southern and western spread of Birmingham. The offer covers same-day delivery, wedding flowers, funeral flowers and corporate event arrangements, and the business describes itself as a large leading Birmingham florist.

Best for

Value. If the budget is the constraint and the flowers still have to be arranged by a florist rather than grabbed from a supermarket, this is among the two or three best options in the city.

What I would order

Ring before two if you want it there today, and be specific about the budget. The shop will make more of thirty pounds than most of the Edgbaston entries in this guide will make of fifty.

Worth knowing

The 4.30pm weekday close is early and genuinely restrictive, and the 4pm Saturday close more so. The house style is conventional, the website is dated, and there is nothing published about seasonality or sourcing.

Has been serving the same stretch of Bristol Road South since 1975.

Who it is not for

Anyone who needs to buy after work. Eros Flowers at Hodge Hill is open until seven, though it is right across the other side of the city.

How it compares

Beryl's World of Flowers at Selly Oak is the other long-serving Bristol Road corridor shop, similarly priced and similarly conventional. The Flower Centre has the wider delivery reach; Beryl's stays open an hour later.

Getting there

On the A38 Bristol Road South at Northfield, close to Northfield station on the Cross City line, with parking on the surrounding roads. The 45, 47 and 63 bus routes all run past it.

Where this assessment comes from

Desk research only. Address, hours, phone and the 1975 founding are corroborated across several listings. The delivery reach is taken from the shop's own per-area pages, which state coverage rather than prove it. The value judgement compares its published range against the rest of this guide.

Sources consulted: The business's own website, contact page and per-postcode delivery pages, its Yelp listing, Florist Central's B31 2JT record, Yell, and the Facebook business page. The 1975 date is carried in its own and third-party listings.

This is a desk-based, opinion-led write-up, not an inspection: I have not audited this business, tested a delivery, or spoken to the owner. Everything above is one person’s reading of information that anyone can look up, and none of it represents the views of the owner of this domain. If you run this shop and something here is wrong or out of date, please tell me and I will fix it.