We do believe that buying from the third world can have a positive impact. While there are obviously flower miles, there are benefits to the local community and to the environment. Outside the English season, we buy all our roses from Ecuador, working with Hoja Verde, a Fairtrade producer in the hills near Quito. We pay 12% extra for these roses, which goes directly to the workers’ cooperative, paying for health and education facilities. From South Africa, we buy sustainably harvested, wild mountain flowers called fynbos from a UNESCO world heritage site in the Cape Floral Kingdom. This provides economic return to an area which contains more plant species than the whole of the British Isles. It prevents the land being turned over to vineyards and offers employment in an area where over 40% of the population have no jobs.