Chiswick Flower Market traders – Jacques Amand
21 August, 2020 / by Matt Smith
Jacques Amand is a family-run business based in Stanmore, Middlesex. They have been selling flowering bulbs of many varieties to discerning gardeners for over 90 years now; they’re experts in all things bulb.
They sell staple bulbs which a layman, such as myself, have heard of – tulips, daffodils & crocuses – but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
They have ‘well-established favourites as well as the rare and unusual’, and are renowned for the diversity and quality of bulbs they offer to customers across many countries.
Nesta Jolliff is one of the plant & bulb specialists at the company; she told me:
“We supply a lot of people. We do a lot of very unusual things and it’s starting to get busy now for us, because it’s coming towards planting time for all the spring flowering bulbs. We also do a lot of things that grow inside as well, bulbous type things – Hippeastrums or Amaryllises, Clivias, outdoor Agapanthus… the list is phenomenal actually”.
Images above: Hippeastrums, Clivias, Agapanthus
The technical term for a bulb is a ‘geophyte’ and is part of the ‘Raunkiær system’, a system for categorising plants which was first devised by Danish botanist Christen C. Raunkiær.
The company began as a flower shop in the Strand after Jean Jacques Amand arrived from the Netherlands in 1927; now it’s being run by his children.
Nesta is Jean’s daughter, and together with her brother they run a company which exudes their pride & passion for plants.
“We have done a lot of flower shows but obviously this year they’ve all been cancelled due to the virus, and as Chiswick Flower Market was starting up we thought we’d give it a go and see what works, see if it works, because it’s really quite local to where we are, so it will encourage people to perhaps come over and visit us” she said.
“My father came over in 1927 and brought my mother over and they were florists in The Strand, then from there into Covent Garden, the old Covent Garden – then gradually we moved to west London, where I lived and where I grew up and then we moved out to Stanmore about 30-odd years ago”.
“We do mail order, we do online, we do from the retail catalogue and we’ve just uploaded the wholesale website”.
“We’re passionate about bulbs and we know our stuff!”.
If you’d like to know more about Jacques Amand, visit their website below.
