Let’s travel back in time and over the water. We’re in America and it’s 1910. Two different florists, on different sides of the country, are mighty fed up with having their flowers wilt on long train journeys. So they come up with a simple idea: let’s telegraph orders to each other. Their simple idea kickstarts a floral revolution. Soon people all across the states are able to use local florists to share fresh, beautiful flowers with their (not so) nearest and dearest.

We didn’t take it slow and steady, by the time 1925 rolled around we were already delivering gorgeous blooms all over the UK, in many cases by horse and cart!

World War II hit hard in the 30s and 40s. Many florists were called to the front and land was given over to growing food rather than flowers. Add to that post and petrol restrictions and it looked like Interflora was done before it had really started. But in dark times little snatches of joy and beauty become more important than ever, so the business fought hard to keep going, to support its florists and to boost morale with blooms.

After the struggles of war, every industry was adjusting to a new normal – including floristry. We wanted to make sure all the florists in network bounced back, so we ran training all over the country. Over 10,000 florists developed their knowledge and skills. Soon Interflora was a byword for floristry excellence. Training and support for our amazing network became a fundamental part of our business.

With flower power sweeping the nation in the 60s, our florists brought big, bold and beautiful designs to the high street. As the seventies kicked off, we celebrated our biggest milestone yet – fifty years of sharing beautiful blooms. We celebrated in style, bringing florists from around the globe to London – a real sign of how big our network had grown.

Through the eighties and nineties our glorious bus toured the country, popping up at county fayres and on high streets to show off the amazing skills of our florists. It was a busy few decades, we were also sponsoring all sorts of sport from athletics to figure skating. We even sponsored F1 winner Nigel Mansell as he zoomed to victory in the 1992 Grand Prix.

By the millennium we'd taken our community of florists online, with the Interflora website launching in 1998. The tech might have been new but one thing hadn’t changed – we were still always pushing for the best possible blooms, and through the noughties we snagged more medals at RHS Chelsea, and so did our exceptional florists. We might have lost count by this point.

We’ve been through some major ups and downs in nearly a century of business, but the Covid-19 pandemic was our toughest challenge yet. We’re exceptionally proud to say our exceptional florists did everything they could – even working out of the garden shed like Erica in the picture! – to keep people in touch. We came through it better and stronger, just in time to hit out 100th birthday.