If you buy a bunch of flowers from one of the county’s florists it’s likely some of the blooms will have come from The Flower Bank.

Not just Cumbria though, but throughout North Lancashire, the Scottish Borders and the North East.

They even have one customer in the Shetlands.

The business on a quiet farmstead in Wreay, near Carlisle, sold 5.5 million stems last year with a turnover of approximately £5 million.

It was created by Helen Wilson, who bought Fearons Flowers at Wigton and then developed it, building the 7000sq ft warehouse just metres away from her home at Bankdale Farm.

She still lives there but sold the business to Tom Brown Wholesalers and Dutch company, Duyvenvoorde five years ago.

Since then, it has bucked the industry trend, which saw an overall decline in profits, growing by more than 200 per cent.

Judith Jarman has seen lots of changes during her 11 years working there. Years ago she would travel the area in a van full of flowers trying to reach new customers.

Now the business - solely for trade customers - is fully automated and virtually all of their orders are online. It’s a 24-hour business with the flower buying done in London at about 1am.

The buckets of flowers are then despatched from the Dutch wholesaler in the early afternoon, driven through the Channel Tunnel and up to Carlisle for about 4am, where a team of six ‘picker packers’ sort the orders. Then nine drivers set off to deliver to the florists’ shops across the North.

They also have carnations and some roses from Colombia and Ecuador flown in.

The blooms arrive within 24 hours of being despatched, six days a week.

Judith says they also try to support British growers in the UK but need large volumes. They also supply oases, cellophane and other sundries which are mostly biodegradable.

But it’s the flowers which remain the big sellers – last year they sold close to three quarters of a million roses.

One of their 400 ‘live’ customers, the Bloom Room in Millom, recently won the British Floral Association UK Florist of the Year.

They also supplied to a previous winner and their blooms can often be seen in Michelin-starred restaurants in Cumbria, including the Samling.