Pinstripes and Peonies are a renown florists based in New Covent Garden Flower Market in Vauxhall. Creative Director, Ruari, started the company in 2010 holding their core belief to "deliver beautiful flowers to lovely people" close to his heart as he continued to develop his business. Now, Pinstripes and Peonies provide bespoke flower arrangements for weddings and events and have even served royalty! Bee Conservation partnered with Pinstripes and Peonies and installed a beehive for them near their business to bring a unique aspect of community to their workplace. We interviewed Ruari about his business and about the hive and here's what he said!
Describe your business for me? We are an events florists specialising in large scale events and weddings. We've provided flowers for venues like the Natural History Museum and even Kensington Palace.
Amazing! So, you've got one of our beehives in New Covent Garden Flower Market where your business is based. What made you want to get a beehive? Over the first lockdown I embarked on a little project, created from stupidity mainly, to make a list of things I would love to do. This involved growing our own flowers, trying to grow local produce for food banks in London, and finally, getting bees.
How do you think it's helped your business? I think it gives us an entertaining edge. It's a bit different. They function as a natural pesticide too which is good, it's great knowing we have 60,000 extra employees helping our flowers grow!
That sounds great. How have you been finding the bees? Great! All our clients love it, they're soft, fluffy friends- what's not to love? Thalia's also lovely, passionate, keen.
I hear your client recently gave one of our jars of honey to Prince Charles! Can you tell me a bit more about that? One of our clients is the National Gallery. They're a wonderful client so we gave them some of our precious jars of honey from our bees that we only give to our favourite clients. They gifted one of those jars of honey to Prince Charles.
It's great knowing our honey is being tasted by royalty! Finally, why do you think it's so important for companies to invest in bees or beehives? I think there's an awful lot of greenwashing around nowadays. Companies have to focus more on sustainability but they often do it in a way that doesn't make change happen. I get bored of that, we don't want to tick boxes and we don't lie about what we do. For us, working with Bee Conservation is a chance to make a real difference in a fun and interesting way. It doesn't tick boxes but properly ties in with our company ethos.
Thank you to Ruari for chatting with us. Be sure to check out Pinstripes and Peonies (@pandpflowers on social media or head to pinstripesandpeonies.com) and email thalia@beeconservation.org.uk to find out how you can get your very own beehive for your business!
Image credits: Pinstripes and Peonies, June 26th 2018, https://www.pinstripesandpeonies.com/post/seasonality-spring)