The boss of an East Midlands farming group said the business had been able to bypass the energy crisis to grow a million poinsettias in time for Christmas.
Bridge Farm Group, based in Spalding in Lincolnshire, supplies Tesco with plants for the festival season.
Managing director Louise Motala said they had been able to cut their bills using biomass heating to keep their greenhouses warm.
The business is one of the UK’s biggest suppliers of poinsettias and is competing strongly with traditional Dutch suppliers.
Ms Motala said: “Growing poinsettias at this time of year requires heat and we know that Dutch growers have cut back on production this year due to rising gas prices.
“We have been able to manage our energy costs through the use of sustainable biomass heating, enabling us to continue to produce over one million UK grown poinsettias again this year and ensuring that consumers will still be able to buy this much-loved festive plant this Christmas.”
Tesco said that UK growers have increased their supply to the supermarket by almost 800 per cent in the last five years.
The supermarket’s plant buyer Vicky l’Anson said: “When poinsettias first became popular as a houseplant in the late 20th century we used to import them from Holland, but now most of our stock is grown in the UK, with Bridge Farm Group our main supplier.
“The British variety are more acclimatised to the UK climate, so not only do they involve fewer road miles by being grown closer to home, but they are hardier too.”
The poinsettia season is one of the shortest and they remain in stores for roughly eight weeks – from the end of October until the end of December.
Poinsettias originated in Mexico where they originally grew much like a weed.
They got the name ‘poinsettia’ after Joel Roberts Poinsett who was a representative of the United States to Mexico as well as being a keen botanist.
They were successfully cultivated in the US during the early 1900s by a German immigrant named Albert Ecke.
Later generations of the Ecke family successfully marketed poinsettias as a Christmas-themed plant during the second half of the 20th century, and they are now widely associated with festive cheer.
