Hypericum is a very important crop to us at The Flower Hub. It’s where our story began.
Once upon a time…(!)… three growers and a retail specialist were chatting about flowers and markets…
They were looking for a way to get their hypericum direct to market without having to go via the auctions, so to cut a long story short: in 2005 The Flower Hub was set up. This was extremely successful and our customers started asking for other flowers to add to their order. We grew as they grew and that is how it all began.
But now, back to Hypericum!
Hypericum, also known as St. John’s Wort, is a flower that was grown for its herbal remedies. There are hundreds of varieties of hypericum, but not all are grown as a cut flower (berry). Despite this, they all have 5 petals and yellow flowers (with some hinting more towards dark orange, and other pale lemon). For the cut flower industry, we are interested in the berries they produce. Characteristically a stem with strong green leaves arranged in pairs up the slightly woody stem, the yellow flowers are a bee-friendly step to reaching the berries.
The berries come in a range of shapes and sizes: the breeders honing in on what is most appealing in the marketplace. Rounder berries with clean crisp colours seem to be the most popular at the moment.
The Flower Hub Projects – Development and Innovation
We have been carrying out a number of trials at The Flower Hub with different colours (one variety is new to Kenya!) and different growing techniques to create a different look – in line with a customer request. It is always so exciting trialing and testing something new. Typically, a crop of hypericum will take 16-18 weeks from planting out (and that’s from a propagated cutting) to 1st Harvest, so as you can imagine, it takes a while to see the results in order to work on improvements.
Hypericum in Kenya
Widely grown, there are multiple hectares grown across the whole of Kenya. The suitability of this crop to our climate means it can grow in pretty much any area.
Some of the best hypericum in the auctions comes from Kenya, and lengths range from 40-80cm.
Our partner at Wildfire Flowers won First Prize for their hypericum display at the second ever Naivasha Horticultural Society Flower Show.
Our Range
We work with a couple of chosen farms to get the best hypericum we can. Our current range includes the Magical Series:
Magical Triumph – the most popular – red
Magical Seasons – a big chocolate berry
Magical Snow Prince – white
Magical Royal Princess – pink
Magical Green Revival – green
Magical Cherry – a big red berry
… to name a few!
