17 September 2021

Our Roots: The Meaning Behind Our Name

Pentalon, Pelaton, Peloton, Petal On, Peleton, even Pentagon Flowers – we’ve been mistakenly called lots of things over the years (although it would be cool to say we supplied flowers to the Pentagon).

And perhaps you didn’t ask, but we thought we’d explain how the name Petalon came about. The idea was to find something that represented the key things that identified us when we first started out in 2014. ‘Petal’ of course represents flowers and the ‘lon’ stands for London, but it is also a play on the word ‘peloton’ (the main group of cyclists in a race) – put it all together and you’ve got a name that encapsulates ‘London flower delivery by bicycle’.

This was where we started – a one-woman business, delivering to a handful of East London postcodes. That delivery area slowly grew as we did, taking on more cyclists, extra florists and studio staff and then adding a ‘postal’ branch to the business to send flowers to the rest of Britain, for all the areas we couldn’t cycle to.

With a dream to one day be able to grow our own flowers and with a personal connection to Cornwall, far off plans to one day move part of the business and our family down south started forming in our minds.

When Coronavirus hit, these plans were somewhat accelerated (which you can read about in more detail here) and in June 2020, Petalon uprooted itself from its London home and we planted ourselves permanently in Cornwall.

Now, in 2021, based solely in Cornwall with a fully functioning flower farm, delivering not just to London but across the UK, 7 days a week, with the biggest team we’ve ever had (including ducks), we’ve evolved a lot since our early days. We may no longer deliver by bicycle as a result of the move, but in turn we’ve gained many other things that allow us to broaden our environmental efforts. With the space we gained to grow our own flowers, we now offer a seasonal Field Flowers product that’s entirely Cornish-grown and available for delivery across Britain. We also supplement our weekly bouquets with our homegrown flowers whenever possible and we compost every single bit of our green waste which is then used again on our farm. All of these things allow us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We manage our land without machinery, pesticides or artificial fertilisers, we use 100% renewable energy and leave more than half of it to be a wild habitat for the local ecosystem.

We’re also working to asses our environmental impact of the business with a view to achieving carbon neutrality later this year which we’re really excited about. Watch this space, we’ve got a few things in the pipeline.

As with any business, you grow, you adapt and you change with the times. Never has this been truer or more necessary than it has been over the last 18 months. And although what Petalon is now may have moved away from the original meaning of our name, it’s still very much a part of us and our story; we may have grown since, but we couldn’t have done it without our roots.

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