Celebrate Mother's Day with British-grown flowers Ian Smith, a fourth-generation flower grower, specialises in quintessentially English cut flowers. At Little Trevean Nursery, just outside Penzance, Ian grows flowers in 12 acres of miniature fields within spitting distance of the sea. Everything is enclosed in tall, narrow hedges of escallonia and privet. In the most exposed places there is a sort of double-decker effect, the hedges planted alongside dry stonewalls to give maximum shelter against sea spray and wind. There's a feeling of continuity wherever you look - from the Trevean-bred range of agapanthus, nerines, brodeas and belladonnas built up by Ian's father and grandfather before him, to the cold store full of terracotta pots, glazed on the inside to hold water before cheap metal or plastic was available. Ian's great-grandfather brought these with him when he moved to the farm from flower growing in the Isles of Scilly before the First World War. There's a 1946 B&B tractor, a push-along, two-wheel machine still used for lifting bulbs. I also fell on a brilliant cutting tool - like a thimble for the thumb with a blade on the end - for picking delicate flowers like hellebores and violets. With these plant varieties, the stems bruise easily if you shove your whole hand into the heart of the plant, but not so with this thumb extension in place. This very tool has been used on the farm for more than 50 years. The patchwork of fields is lined with glass cloches, just glass or glass on top of plastic for extra insulation. Ian starts his flowering year with Christmas roses (Helleborus niger) and snowdrops, moving in February and March to iris, snowflake and grape hyacinth, joined by scillas, lily-of-the-valley and Solomon's seal as March draws to a close. In April, there are camassias and alliums, joined by 'Jacks," the magenta species gladiolus, Gladiolus communis subsp. byzantinus, for May. The farm is as far south-west as you can go and has brilliant light levels, but Ian builds on this geographical advantage by manipulating his crops to produce in succession. He doesn't want flowers all coming in a whoosh, which he would then be unable to sell. With annuals, you can sow some a few weeks apart and thus manipulate their flowering season, but with perennials you have to make more effort to spread their natural season. Some of his lines of lily-of-the-valley are about to start flowering, yet lily-of-the-valley leaves are not even an inch out of the ground in my garden. The early lines he has on the warmest south-facing slopes, cloched and further protected with a double layer of plastic or bubble wrap insulation. The next lines to crop are under just glass, then there are those in the open field, and finally a line or two tucked in the shade, with some shaded further under a light covering of straw to delay their development. This means a lily-of-the-valley harvest starting early, giving a commercial advantage, and lasting for six weeks, which is triple what I get in my garden. This all comes from a knowledge of the plants and the site in which they're growing - a dying skill. When Ian helped his father as a boy, there were 25 to 30 flower growers in the Penzance area alone. Now Ian reckons there are less than half a dozen. He reports a bias against English flowers when sold in a market next to Dutch or Italian. He tells me a story about bunches of eucalyptus he was selling last summer. The wholesaler who took his stock priced it at 60p a bunch and placed it, clearly marked English, next to some Dutch-grown stock for £2. Most florists chose the Dutch, with a preconception that it was "better stuff." You only have to visit Ian's farm to see this is not the case. There's nothing wrong with imported flowers, but all Little Trevean's spring flowers have that romantic, just-picked-from-the-garden feel and a fantastic story, which is just what I want when buying flowers. As with English cheese and farmers" market veg, this is artisan, smallholder growing which we seem to love in our food, but have not yet made the leap to realising can apply to cut flowers. We are letting these places slip away. Bear this in mind as you choose you Mother's Day bouquet. Sarah Raven and Jonathan Buckley stayed at Bay House luxury B&B, The Lizard, Cornwall (01326 290235; mostsoutherlypoint.co.uk). Ian Smith sells to florists only. Email him at im.smith@homecall.co.uk