This is such a hard one, and, unfortunately (no, not unfortunately, because flowers are lovely), we tend to phone the florist and send a beautiful bunch of flowers to assuage our grief for our loved one, and this is the norm – flowers.

The best way to tell you about our company, Give Plants is to explain why we established it in the first place. What happened was a close family friend passed away and his wife received many beautiful bouquets of flowers, as per the norm. All good, but really? What a waste! All those beautiful flowers would be dead in two weeks or less and the demise of the flowers would mean that she would, once again, be confronted with the loss of her husband. Flowers, although beautiful, are so short lived which means there will be no enduring memory, and speaking of memories, my enduring memory is of my friend’s wife’s house being totally swamped with flowers, without enough vases available in which to put them, which meant they died even more quickly.

The best word in the Give Plants lexicon is ‘living’, and that is what we supply –‘living’ plants. We all know what it is like to be confronted (for that is the only word to use here) with the death of a loved one, and all the inherent difficulties that go with those difficult days and really, the last thing we need is masses of flowers to deal with when they quite quickly die. Imagine the pleasure in receiving a beautifully presented living plant, maybe a Chinese Star Jasmine, with its sweet, fragrant, starry white flowers or a fragrant lemon or lime tree, which, will quite simply, always remind us of our departed loved one. A living sympathy or bereavement gift that will keep giving for years to come.