Starting & Growing a Wedding Flowers Business With India Hurst

My Small Business & Me

#041 - Florist and flower grower India Hurst from Vervain shares her small business journey. Coming from a family of growers, she set up her floristry business in 2014. And she now creates wedding and event flowers in her 'orchestrated chaos' floral style.
Both India's parents are horticulturalists. Her dad developed a growing medium and her great grandfather started Alton Greenhouses. So it was expected that she would work with flowers and plants. But she was against it having as a teenager spent many a summer holiday at flower shows.
After initially studying graphic design at university, she worked in London in various art galleries. She knew that she didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk. And she decided to start a blog about plants with an art focus.
The blog got her more and more hooked on the area she'd promised she wasn’t going to get involved with. She started going to the flower shows again and saw the flowers and plants with fresh eyes.

When she and her partner moved down to Bath in May 2014, she attended a Taster Day at The Tallulah Rose Flower Show. She immediately signed up for their 4-week career course. Then, as soon as she left, she set up her floristry business Vervain.

India knew what she wanted to create and the image she wanted to portray. So she organised a 3-day photoshoot, made all the content that she wanted to showcase on her website and arranged for her designs to be photographed.

In the interview, she discusses the services she now offers including weddings and events such as birthday parties, dinner parties and engagements parties. She also talks about how she describes her distinctive floral style.

Currently, she uses around 75% British flowers in her wedding work, some of which are grown by her and some are sourced from local growers. She's aiming by 2023 to be using 100% British flowers.

India is very passionate about sustainability, grows her flowers organically and peat free, and composts everything that is waste from her weddings. She’s also obsessed with bearded irises and has grown her collection to over 500 plants in 160 different varieties.

She shares the story of how she came to create the wedding flowers for Lydia Pang, the global editorial design director at Nike HQ , and designer Roo Williams, a wedding which was featured in Vogue magazine. The impact of the pandemic on her business, her photography journey, her why and plans for future are also covered.

Listening to this episode, you'll hear how passionate India is about British flowers, her bearded iris collection and the importance of practising creating floral designs. At the end of the podcast, you'll discover her practical tips, which I'm sure you'll find very inspiring.
Show notes are available on the My Small Business & Me website: https://mysmallbusinessandme.com/episode41