Chiswick Flower Market celebrates its sixth birthday

Photographs Anna Kunst

Let there be cake

Can it be six years since Chiswick held its first flower market? There was a beautiful cake and glasses of prosecco being handed out on Sunday (6 September) and a gorgeous purple butterfly on stilts to celebrate.

The Mayor of Hounslow was there competing with her in the best bling contest, and also vying with MP Andy Slaughter and local councillors Jack Emsley, Linden Grigg and Amy Croft for the most Chiswick events they could attend in one weekend – See also Abundance London’s Apple Day on Saturday and the Strand on the Green street party on Sunday.

READ ALSO: Chiswick Apple Day 2026

READ ALSO: Strand on the Green street party, Tidefest 2026

Cllr Ranjit Gill, now Mayor, helped out at the market from its inception when he was a Chiswick councillor representing Chiswick Gunnersbury.

Mayor of Hounslow, former Chiswick councillor Ranjit Gill with the stilt walker and with the Representative Deputy Lieutenant for the London Borough of Hounslow Rosi Prescott; the sixth birthday cake

Reports on BBC News and in The Telegraph on how the drought has affected British flower growers

BBC London sent a news crew, not to celebrate the sixth birthday, though they were to report at the start when it opened in 2020 in the teeth of the pandemic, but to talk to flower growers about what a tough summer it had been. The summer of 2026 is officially the UK’s warmest since records began in 1884.

Lisa Comfort, who has a flower field in Chipperfield, Hertfordshire, told the BBC she lived in a caravan all summer so she could be up to cut her flowers before it became too hot at 8.30 am, and so she could water them after the sun went down.

The BBC London crew at the market

Several growers told them they had to abandon some crops to keep others alive because they could not afford to water them all, and several stallholders dropped out because they did not have the produce to bring to market.

READ ALSO on BBC News: Record heat leaves flower growers short of blooms

Flower Market director Ollie Saunders wrote about it for The Chiswick Calendar in his blog last week.

READ ALSO: British flower farmers have faced one of their toughest summers in decades

The Telegraph also picked up the story on Sunday.

READ ALSO on The Telegraph website: Flower farmers pull out of markets as record heat wipes out stock

(L) Councillors Jack Emsley and Linden Grigg with Jack’s wife Caroline; (R) Cllr Amy Croft with Sally Smith, COO West London Chambers of Commerce, Cllr Ranjit Gill, Andy Slaughter MP and Rosi Prescott

One of the growers who has been at the market from the start, Rob Hardy, thanked the flower market volunteers for all the hard work they put in every month to keep the High Road busy and enabling the stallholders to sell their plants and flowers.

Rob Hardy of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants