Tuckshop Flowers

The verdict

Tuckshop Flowers is the only entry on this list where the person selling you the flowers also grew a large share of them, and that single fact reorders almost every judgement I would otherwise make. Carole left teaching in 2012 and set the business up in 2013, growing scented, chemical-free flowers in a large urban garden and an allotment in Bournville and arranging them from a home studio. She is a member of Flowers from the Farm and appears in the British Flower Collective, both of which are networks for British growers rather than badges you can buy. The practical consequence is freshness of a kind the rest of the trade cannot match. A stem cut that morning a mile away has not spent three days in a Dutch auction, a lorry and a wholesaler's cold room. It also means scent, which is the first thing bred out of commercial flowers and the thing her own writing keeps returning to. The style follows from the supply: loose, seasonal, garden-shaped, and visibly not built from the same twelve varieties every other shop is buying. The cost of all this is availability, and she is honest about it. A grower cannot sell you February peonies. She works without floral foam and without flower preservatives, and she has won a Green Birmingham award for her recycling. If you want a specific flower on a specific date, this is not the business. If you want the best thing growing that week, nothing else in the city comes close.

There is no shop and no shop hours. Work is by arrangement: bouquets, funeral flowers and wedding flowers, plus a strand of writing and teaching about growing. The wedding side is pitched at couples who want British and seasonal rather than a colour-matched scheme, which is the only honest way to sell wedding flowers you intend to grow yourself. At the time of writing the website is closed to new orders. Her Instagram remains active, and for a grower-florist a closed order book is a normal seasonal state rather than a sign of trouble, but it does mean you should make contact before you plan around her.

The only florist on this list who grows a large share of what she sells, in a Birmingham garden and an allotment.

Who it is not for

Anyone who needs flowers today, or a named variety on a named date. For same-day delivery in exactly this part of the city, Sarah Kelly's Flower Room at Longbridge has a 2pm cut-off and free parking outside the door.

How it compares

In Bloom in the Jewellery Quarter is the closest thing to a shopfront equivalent: British where it can be, no floral foam, seasonally led. In Bloom buys those principles in, and Tuckshop grows them. Ash Tree Floral Designs also uses British-grown stems alongside Dutch imports.

Getting there

Bournville and Kings Norton stations are both on the Cross City line and both close, but there is nothing to visit: this is a home studio, by arrangement only. Treat contact by email or Instagram as the front door.