Marholmen is making a big investment in locally grown cut flowers

Beda's Flower Meadow – beautiful, sustainable, and eco-friendly

This spring, Marholmen is starting its own flower gardens. This means they'll be self-sufficient in cut flowers for decorations all year round and can offer activities like flower arranging and pick-your-own flowers. This initiative is also really good for the environment; it boosts biodiversity and Marholmen can stop buying imported cut flowers.

Marholmen's local flower supplier, Kärodlat, is currently establishing the flower farm "Bedas blomsteräng" on the island, as part of Marholmen's ongoing sustainability efforts. This new flower meadow means that Marholmen will be self-sufficient in cut flowers year-round and can completely stop buying imported flowers. The cultivation is, of course, free from pesticides and artificial fertilizers.

This new initiative also means that Marholmen can offer activities based on the cultivation, such as courses in arranging flowers in vases, flower binding, and self-picking.

– With our local cultivation, we can totally skip the global flower industry's chemical use, huge water consumption, and long transport distances. We can decorate the whole place all year long with beautiful flowers that grow naturally right here on Marholmen, and at the same time, we're boosting the island's biodiversity, says Marholmen's CEO Fredrik Utheim.

Flower decoration that follows the seasonal cycle

When Sara creates Marholmen's floral decorations, she works with fresh flowers from the gardens from June to October, and for the rest of the year, she uses dried flowers, year-round greenery, and things found in nature.

– There are so many beautiful flowers we can grow locally here in Sweden, so I really don't see the need to import them. The season kicks off with tulips, narcissus, wild raspberries, wild honeysuckle, redcurrants, hazel, and early perennials. Then we get ranunculus and anemones, annuals like delphinium, snapdragon, zinnia, summer mallow, asters, statice, amaranths, cosmos, and everlasting flowers, and so on. In early August, the garden's star, the dahlia, makes its appearance. It's something we all really look forward to!, says Sara Lewell, Kärnodlat Roslagen.

Photographer: Mia Lewell